This will not be an easy concept to impart, I fear. Some of these Herlandist radicals seem to find my arrival more traumatic than that of the Enemy, so long ago. An affront to be ignored if possible.
What do their leaders fear from renewed contact with distant kin?
Negotiations for my long-delayed landing are done at last. They assure me of facilities adequate to launch my aeroshell back into orbit when the visit is completed, so there’s no need to go auto-mine an asteroid and build an ungainly, all-purpose craft. Tomorrow I descend to start discussions in person.
I have never been so nervous before a mission. This sub-species has much to offer. Their bold experiment may enrich humanity. Too bad, as chance had it, they were rediscovered by a male peripatetic.
The omens might have been better were I a woman.
13
Maia was soon disoriented in the stealthy dash through dark corridors and down unlit stairs. Kiel, who led the way, kept rushing ahead and then causing a bump and jostle each time she stopped abruptly to use a small penlight, consulting a hand-drawn map.
“Where did you get that?” Maia whispered at one point, pointing at the vellum diagram.
“A friend worked on the digging crew. Now be quiet.”
Maia took no offense. A few gruff words were nothing compared to what else Kiel and Thalla had done. Maia’s heart was full to bursting that her friends had come all this way, at untold risks, to rescue her.
And Renna, she reminded herself. As they hurried through the gloomy halls, she tried not to look at the person she had just seen for the first time, whom she had beforehand thought she knew so well. A creature from outer space. Perhaps sensing her discomfort, Renna hung a few paces behind. Maia felt irritated with him, and with herself, that her feelings were so obvious. “Is he telling the truth?” she whispered to Thalla, as Kiel consulted her map again near a meeting of two vast, unlit dormitory chambers. “About being … you know?”
Thalla shrugged. “Never know with males. Always goin’ on about their travels. Maybe this one’s been farther than most.”
Maia wanted to believe Thalla’s nonchalance. “You must have suspected something when you picked up the radio message.”
“What radio message?” Thalla asked. As Kiel motioned them forward again, Maia found her confusion redoubling. She pursued whispered questions as they walked.
“If you didn’t get a message, how did you find us?”
“Wasn’t easy, virgie. Day after they took you, we tried following the trail. Seemed to be takin’ you east, but then a big gang of sisters from Keally Clan rode up and drove us off. By the time we circled round, the tracks were cold. Turns out they pulled a switch over by Flake Rock, so it wasn’t east, after all.”
Maia shook her head. She had been unconscious or delirious during most of the ride out from Lerner Hold, so she had no idea how long it had taken.
Thalla grinned. The tall woman’s pale face was barely visible in the reflection of Kiel’s swaying beam off stone walls. “Finally, we got wind o’ this Beller creature, comin’ upland with an escort. Kiel had a hunch they might be headin’ for this abandoned site. We got some friends together an’ managed to tag along out o’ sight. An’ here we are.”
Thalla made it sound so simple. In fact, it must have involved a lot of sacrifice, not to mention risk. “Then you didn’t come just for … him?” Maia jerked her head backward, toward the one taking up the rear. Thalla grimaced.
“Ain’t a man a man? It’ll drive the Perkies crazy he’s gone, though. Reason enough to take him, at least till the coast. There he can join his own kind.”
In the dark, Maia could not read Thalla’s features. The woman’s tone was tense and perhaps she wasn’t telling the whole truth. But the message was sufficient. “You came for me, after all.”
Thalla reached over as they walked, giving Maia’s shoulder a squeeze. “What are var-buddies for? Us against a Lysos-less world, virgie.”
It was like a line from that adventure book Maia had read, about stalwart summer women forging a new world out of the ruins of a brittle, broken yesterday. Suddenly, Kiel interrupted with a sharp hiss. Their guide covered her light and motioned for quiet. Silently, almost on tiptoe, they joined her near an intersection, where their dim corridor crossed another one, more brightly lit. Kiel cautiously leaned out to peer left, then right. Her breath cut short.
“What is it?” the man asked, catching up from behind, his voice carrying startlingly. Thalla’s hand made a chopping sign and he said no more. Standing still, they could hear faint sounds—a clinking, a low rattle, voices rising briefly, then fading to a low murmur. Kiel moved her hands to pantomime that there were people in sight, some distance down the cross corridor.
What now? Maia worried, a tightness in her throat. Clearly Kiel’s map was incomplete. Would it offer an alternate route? Was there enough time?
To Maia’s surprise, Kiel did not motion for them to turn around. Instead, she took a deep breath, visibly braced herself, and stepped boldly into the light!
Maia knew it was only her dark-adapted eyes overreacting. Still, when Kiel entered the wan illumination of the hallway, it was as if she had briefly gone aflame. How could anyone not notice such a shining presence?
But no one did. The older var glided smoothly across the exposed area without a sound, reentering darkness in safety on the other side. There was no change in the mutter of conversation. Thalla took the next turn, trying to imitate Kiel’s liquid, silent stride. Sudden reflection off her pale skin seemed even more glaringly impossible to ignore, lasting two ponderously long seconds. Then she, too, was across.
Maia glanced at the man, Renna, who smiled and touched her elbow, urging her to go ahead. It was a friendly gesture, an expression of confidence, and Maia briefly hated him for it. She could just make out the two women, dim figures across the bright intersection, also waiting for her. To Maia, her own heartbeat sounded loud enough to echo off the rocky walls. She got a grip on herself, flaring her nostrils, and stepped forward.
Time seemed to telescope, fractional seconds stretching into subjective hours. Maia’s distant feet moved on their own, freeing her to glance right toward a searing image of bracketed flamelight … of broken furniture burning in a chiseled fireplace, while silhouetted figures drank from goblets, leaning over to watch the arcing fall of dice onto a wooden table. Their cries made Maia’s skin crawl.
The scene was so dazzling, she became disoriented and veered off course to collide with a sharp corner of the intersection. Thalla had to yank her the rest of the way into blessed darkness. Maia rubbed where her forehead had struck stone, blinking to reaccustom her eyes to obscurity.
She looked up quickly. “Renna?” she whispered, casting about.
“I’m here, Maia,” came a soft reply.
She turned to her left. The man stood with Kiel a little farther down the dim hallway. Maia hadn’t heard or sensed him cross. Embarrassed by her outburst, she looked away. This person was not at all like the sage, older woman she had envisioned. Though there had been no lies, she nonetheless felt betrayed, if by nothing else, then by her all-too-human tendency to make assumptions.
Unless it has to do with the ships or sparking, you just suppose a person is female till you learn otherwise. I guess that’s not very nice.
Still … he should have told me!
Now she and Thalla took up the rear while Renna and Kiel forged ahead. For the first time, Maia noticed that the man was carrying a small blue pouch at his belt and something much larger strapped across his back. A slim case of burnished metal.
A Game of Life set, she realized. Oh, he’s a man, all right!
I was such an idiot, picturing some noble savant who’d figured out how to send such clever messages out of pure resourcefulness. I don’t suppose those tricks were difficult for a man who’s spent his whole life playing the game.
It was obvious enough, now. But trapped in her cell with only clicks in the night for company,
she had been looking more through wishes than reason. How strange, to feel a sense of mourning for a friend who stood just a few meters away, alive, healthy, and, for the moment, free. Yet the Renna Maia had imagined was dead, as surely as Leie. This new Renna was an unwelcome replacement.
Unfair? Maia knew it.
LIFE’S unfair. So? Find Lysos and sue her.
Minutes later, Kiel led them to a narrow door where she knocked twice. The wooden portal swung open, revealing a stocky blonde woman holding a crowbar like a weapon. The door showed signs of damage, its lock-hasp pried away, a broken padlock on the floor.
“Got ’em?” the gate guardian asked. She was tall, rangy, fair-haired, and tough-looking. Kiel only nodded. “Come on,” Thalla said, leading the way down another short flight of stairs. Maia smelled the night even before a chill wind touched her skin. It had a freshness she had never felt from the open window of her cell. Then they were outside, under the stars.
• • •
From the postern gate they stepped onto a broad stone porch, just one meter above the level of the plain. Kiel strode to the edge, brought her fingers to her mouth, and whistled the call of a gannen bird. From the darkness came a trilling reply, like an echo, followed by the sound of hoofbeats. The tall blonde pushed the door back into place as four women came riding up, each holding the reins of one or two spare mounts.
Unleashing bundles tied to the back of one animal, Thalla thrust into Maia’s hands a rough wool coat, which she gratefully slipped on. She was still buttoning when Kiel took her arm and motioned toward the edge of the platform, where a sash-horse had been brought alongside. Moonlight glistened along the beast’s striped flanks as it snorted, blew and stamped. Maia couldn’t help cringing a bit. Her riding experience had been confined to tame beasts guided by skilled Trevor wranglers, hired for springtime outings so Lamai summerlings could check one more item off their mothers’ “life-preparation” syllabus as quickly and cheaply as possible.
“He won’t bite, virgie,” the woman holding the bridle said, laughing.
Pride overcame apprehension, and Maia managed to grab the saddle horn without trembling. Slipping her left foot into the stirrup, she swung astride. The horse danced, testing her weight. She reached over to accept the reins, feeling elated when the creature did not bolt the next instant. Relieved, Maia bent to pat its neck.
“What the hell is that?”
They were gruff words of protest. Maia turned to see the man, Renna, pointing at the beast in front of him. Kiel came alongside and touched his arm, as if to ease his fears.
“It’s a horse. We use them here for riding and—”
Renna cocked his head. “I know what a horse is. I meant, what’s that thing on its back?”
“On its back? Why … that’s a saddle, where you ride.”
Perplexed, he shook his head. “That blocky thing’s a saddle? Why is it different than the others?”
All the women, even Maia, burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. The question was so incongruous, so unexpected. Maybe he was from outer space, after all! Renna’s look of confused consternation only made her giggle more, covering her mouth with her free hand.
Kiel, too, tried to conceal mirth. “Naturally, it’s a sidesaddle. I know you’d prefer a wagon or palanquin, but we just haven’t got …” The woman stopped in mid-sentence and stared. “What are you doing?”
Renna had jumped off the porch and was teaching underneath the mount selected for him. “Just … making a slight … adjustment,” he grunted. “There.”
To Maia’s astonishment, the bulky, cushioned saddle slid sideways and tumbled to the ground. Then, even more surprisingly, the man took the horse’s mane in his hands and, in a single bound, leaped aboard straddle-wise, like a woman! The others reacted with audible gasps. Maia winced at an involuntary twinge in her loins.
“How can you—” Thalla started to ask, dry-mouthed.
“Stirrups would be nice,” he interrupted. “But we can take turns riding bareback till we rig something up. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”
Kiel blinked. “Are you sure you know what you’re—”
In answer, Renna flicked the reins and set his mount cantering, then trotting toward the place where the sun had set hours ago. The direction of the sea. As they stared after him, he let out a cry of such exultation that Maia felt a thrill. The man had given voice to what wanted out of her own lungs. Amazement gave way to pure joy as she, too, dug in her heels. Her mount complied willingly, hastening on the same bearing, kicking dust toward the memory of her imprisonment.
The escape party didn’t take the direct route to safety, toward the outlet of Long Valley. The Perkinites would surely look there first. Kiel and the others had a plan. After that initial exuberant trot, the caravan settled into a brisk but deliberate walk, roughly south by southwest.
About an hour after departure, there came a faint sound in the distance behind them. A low clanging. Turning around, Maia saw the thin, moonlit, rocky spire where she had been jailed, by now diminished with distance and beginning to sink into the horizon. High along its dark flank, several bright pinpoints told of windows coming alight.
“Bloody moonset!” Kiel cursed, clucking to her mount and setting a quicker pace. “I was hoping we’d have till morning. Let’s make tracks.”
Kiel didn’t speak figuratively, Maia soon realized. The band kept purposely to open ground, where speed was good but the horses’ hooves also left easily-followed impressions. “It’s part of our plan, so’s to make the Perkies lazy,” Thalla explained as they rode along. “We have a trick in mind. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not,” Maia replied. She was too happy to be concerned. After running the horses for a while, they halted, and the tall, rough-looking blonde rose high in her stirrups to aim a spyglass rearward. “No sign of anyone breathin’ down our necks,” she said, collapsing the tube again. The pace slowed then, to keep their mounts from tiring.
Prompted by a brief query from Thalla, asking how she had been treated in prison, Maia found herself spilling whole run-on paragraphs about her arrival at the stony citadel, about the terrible cooking of the Guel jailers, how awful it had been to spend Autumn End Day in a place like that, and how she never hoped to see the insides of a man sanctuary again. She knew she was jabbering, but if Thalla and the others seemed amused, she didn’t care. Anyone would jabber after such a sudden reversal of fortunes, from despair to excitement, with the fresh air of freedom filling her lungs like an intoxicant.
There followed another period of quick trotting and more brisk walking. Soon a lesser moon—Aglaia—rose to join Durga in the sky, and someone started humming a sailor’s chantey in greeting. Another woman pitched in with words, singing a rich, mellow contralto. Maia eagerly joined the chorus.
“Oh blow, ye winds of the western sea,
And blow ye winds, heigh-ho!
Give poor shipmen clemency,
And blow, ye winds, heigh ho!”
After listening a few rounds, Renna added his deeper tenor to the refrain, which sounded appropriate for a sailing ballad. He caught Maia’s eye at one point, winking, and she found herself smiling back shyly, not terribly displeased.
More songs followed. It soon grew clear to Maia that there was a division among the women. Kiel and Thalla and one other—a short brunette named Kau—were citybred, sophisticated, with Kiel clearly the intellectual leader. At one point, all three of them joined in a rousing anthem whose verses were decidedly political.
“Oh, daughters of the storm assemble,
What seems set in stone can still be changed!
Who will care whom you resemble,
When the order of life is rearranged?”
Maia recalled the melody from those nights sharing a cottage at Lerner Hold, listening to the clandestine radio station. The lyrics conveyed an angry, forceful resolve to upset the present order, making a determined break with the past. The other four women knew this song, and lent
support to the chorus. But there was a sense of restraint, as if they disagreed in some parts, while thinking the verses too soft in others. When their turn came again, the others once more chose songs Maia knew from school and creche. Traditional ballads of adventure. Songs of magic lamps and secret treasures. Of warm hearths left behind. Of revealed talents, and wishes coming true. The melodies were more comforting, even if the singers weren’t. From their accents and features, she guessed the two shorter, stockier ones must be from the Southern-Isles, legendary home of reavers and sharp traders, while the other two, including the rangy blonde, spoke with the sharp twang typical of this part of Eastern Continent. Maia learned the blonde was named Baltha, and seemed to be the leader of the four.
All told, it seemed a tough, confident bunch of vars. They had no apparent fear, even if by some chance Tizbe Beller and her guards caught up with them.
The singing died down before their next break to adjust tack and trade mounts. After resuming, for a while everyone was quiet, allowing the metronome rhythm of the horses’ hooves to make low, percussive music of an earthier nature. No longer distracted, Maia took greater note of the cold. Her fingers were especially sensitive, and she wound up keeping her hands in the pockets of the thick coat, holding the reins through layers of cloth.
Renna trotted ahead to ride next to Kiel, causing some muttering among the other women. Baltha was openly disapproving.
“No business a man ridin’ like that,” she said, watching from behind as Renna jounced along, legs straddling his mount. “It’s kinda obscene.”
“Seems he knows what he’s doing,” Thalla said. “Gives me chills watchin’, though. Even now that he’s got a normal saddle. Can’t figure how he doesn’t cripple himself.”
Baltha spat on the ground. “Some things men just oughtn’t be let to do.”
“Right,” one of the stocky southerners added. “Horses were made for women. Obvious from how we’re built an men aren’t. Lysos meant it that way.”