“Look, that wife of mine, she gets mad at me sometimes, once she ran away to her mother and stayed almost forty days, but she come cryin’ back to me again. How do I know you’re not holding her there and she wanting to come back?’”
“Just why would we do a thing like that?” asked Mother Lauria mildly.
“You think I don’t know what goes on in places like this?”
“Yes,” said Mother Lauria, “I think you do not know at all.”
“Keitha, she’s too much a woman to get along without a man!” Shann blustered, “You send her out here right now!”
“I’m really afraid, you know,” said the Guild Mother with great composure, “that you are going to have to accept my word: Keitha n’ha Casilda has expressed no desire to return to you. If you wish to hear this from her own lips, we allow visitors on the night of High Moon, and you are welcome to come, unweaponed, alone or with members of your immediate family, and speak to her either alone or in our presence, as she herself wishes. But at this hour and on this day no man may enter here unless he has business here, and you, sir, assuredly have none. I ask you now to take yourself and your men away from here, and not to create a commotion on our doorstep.”
“I tell you, I’m coming in and get my wife,” Shann shouted, whipped out his sword and started up the steps. Camilla and Magda, long knives drawn, quickly stepped forward and blocked the way.
“You think I’m not a match for a pair of girls?” He whipped the sword down, but Camilla, moving swiftly as a striking snake, caught his blade with hers and struck it from his hand. He missed his footing on the stairs and stumbled, almost falling. He shouted to his men “Come on! Let’s get in there!”
Magda braced herself for another attack. The white light of the snow in the street, the two huge men slowly advancing, Camilla at her shoulder, the knife-scars on her face white and drawn. For Magda the scant few seconds it took for the men to mount the first step seemed to last an eternity.
Then the men were on them and Magda felt herself thrusting, twisting the steel; the man’s sword clanged, whipped sideways, slashed quickly back, and Magda felt a line of fire slice along her leg.
It didn’t hurt, not yet, but while she blocked the next stroke— skills learned in Intelligence training, years ago, were coming back rapidly—what she mostly felt was shock.
You get this kind of training, it’s routine, but you don’t expect to have to use it, not really. You find you can do it, her thoughts raced, but you don’t believe it, not while you’re doing it, not even while you’re bleeding. Her mind lagged behind but her body was fighting, driving the men back, down the steps. One slipped in the snow and Magda felt the sword go in under his breastbone before she fully knew it, felt the body sliding back off the blade, pulled by its own dead weight. She brought her knife up to guard against the next man; did not realize that Shann had gone down, bleeding, under Camilla’s sword; that Camilla had said, to the third man, “Had enough?”
Magda did not hear: she was going after the third man in a flurry of sword-strokes, forcing him back and down the steps. Her blood sounded loud in her own ears and there was a blurry haze, blood-colored, before her eyes. A voice inside her seemed to be screaming, Kill them, kill them all! All of her rage against the Darkovan men who had kept her from the work and the world she wanted, her terror of the bandits who had disarmed her and shown her her own weakness—it was almost a sensual frenzy, letting the sword move almost without volition, until she heard someone shouting her name. By now the sound meant nothing. She saw the man before her slip, stumble to his knees. Then another sword struck hers down; she whirled to face her attacker and in the moment before she struck, she saw Camilla’s face; it made her pause, just a moment, and her sword went flying with a violence that knocked her hand numb.
“No, Margali! No! He surrendered, didn’t you see him raise his sword in surrender?” Camilla’s hand bit into her wrist, a cruel grip that paralyzed her fingers.
Magda came up to her senses, shaking; she looked, in consternation, at the man she had killed, and Shann next to him, groaning in his blood at the foot of the stairs. The third man had backed off and was staring in dismay at a wound in his forearm, from which fresh blood welled up.
Camilla said furiously “You have disgraced your knife!” She pushed Magda down, hard, on the steps, and went down the stairs to the wounded man.
“I most humbly beg your pardon, sir. She is new to fighting, and untried; she did not see your gesture of surrender.”
The wounded man said, “I thought you women were going to kill us all, surrender or no! And this is no quarrel of mine, mestra!”
Camilla said, “I have honorably sold the service of my blade for thirty years, comrade. My companion is young. Believe me, we will so deal with her that she will not so disgrace her blade again. But are you not Shann’s sworn man?”
The mercenary spat. “Sworn man to that one? Zendru’s hells, no! I’m a paid sword, no more. It’s no business of mine to lose my life for the likes of him!”
“Let me see your wound,” Camilla said, “You shall have indemnity, believe me. We have no quarrel with you.”
“And I have no quarrel with you, and no blood-feud, mestra. Between ourselves, I’d say that if his wife left him he’d given her cause four times over, but my sword is for hire, so I fought while he fought. But he is no kin or sworn comrade.” Awkwardly, with his unwounded hand, he thrust the sword back into its sheath, and pointed to Shann. “I’ll go find his housefolk and his paxmen to haul him home; he’s nothing to me, but when I fight at a man’s side, I don’t leave him to bleed to death in the street.” He looked regretfully at the man Magda had killed. “Now he was a pal of mine; we’ve been hiring out our swords together for twelve years come midsummer.”
Camilla said gravely, “Who grudges his blood to a blade had better earn his living behind the plow.”
The man sighed, made the cristoforo sign of prayer. “Aye, he’s laid his burdens now on the Bearer of the World’s Wrongs. Peace to him, mestra.” He looked at his wounded arm. “But it goes hard to have blood shed after surrender!”
Mother Lauria came down the steps. “You shall have whatever indemnity a judge names as fair. Camilla, take him to the Stranger’s Room and bind up his wound.”
Camilla turned angry eyes on Magda. She said, with savage contempt, “Get inside, you, before you disgrace us further!”
Puzzled, feeling betrayed, Magda managed to stumble inside. The wound in her thigh, which she had hardly felt at the time, began to throb as if it had been burned with fire.
She had fought for the house. She had done her best—had the man truly surrendered before she struck him?
In the mountains I disgraced myself because I was afraid to fight, then when I fight I disgrace the Guild House… She felt sobs choking her, and braced herself against them; if she let herself cry now she would break into hysterical crying and never be able to stop…
“Breda—” said a soft, troubled voice, and Keitha’s pale, tear-stained face looked into hers. “Oh, how cruel she is! You fought for us, you are hurt too—and she cares more for that soldier’s wound than yours! And you have shed your blood for us! Come, let me, at least, look after your hurt—”
Magda let herself lean heavily on Keitha as they went up the stairs. Keitha went on, indignant, “I saw it all—how can Camilla be so unjust? So the man had surrendered—what of that? I wish you had killed them all—”
Magda’s leg had begun to hurt so badly that she felt dizzy. Blood was dripping on the floor. Keitha drew her inside the bathroom on their floor, pushed her down on a little wooden bathing stool and gently pulled off the slashed breeches. The cut was deep, blood still welling up slowly from the bottom. Magda clung to the stool, suddenly afraid of falling, while Keitha sponged the wound with icy water. While she was working on it, Mother Lauria came slowly up the stairs and stepped inside.
She looked coldly at the two women. “How badly are you hurt, Marga
li?”
Magda set her teeth. “I don’t know enough about wounds to know how bad it is. It hurts.”
Lauria came and examined the slash herself. “It is a clean wound and it will heal; but painful. Did you get it from a surrendered man fighting for his life?”
Magda said clearly, “I did not; it was the first man, the one I killed, and I was fighting myself for my life, since I suppose he would not have stopped at killing me.”
“Well, that’s something,” Mother Lauria said.
“How can you blame her so!” Keitha cried. “She fought to defend us, she is hurt and bleeding, yet you let Camilla bully her and call her harsh names, then you come and bully her further, before her wound is even bandaged—”
The Guild Mother’s face was stern. “To kill a surrendered man is murder,” she said. “If Camilla had not struck down her sword, she could have killed a defenseless man and brought blood-feud on us. As it is, we are fortunate that he was only a hired mercenary; had he been one of MacShann’s sworn men, they would be bound to avenge him! Thendara House would have had to answer challenge after challenge, and it could have destroyed us! Fortunately, his wound is not disabling, and Camilla has been a hired mercenary herself and knows their codes of honor. She is dressing his wound in the Stranger’s Room, and she hopes he will accept a cash indemnity for the wound so shamefully given.”
Magda lowered her head, accepting the guilt. Yes, she had lost control, she was to blame. She remembered Cholayna Ares, in Intelligence school, warning them. Never lose control, never lose your temper; never kill unless you wish to kill. To keep her fear at bay, she had clung to her anger, and it had disgraced her. She sat trembling, feeling that Mother Lauria’s anger was a tangible thing, a sort of red glow around the woman. And then she wondered if she were going mad.
Lauria turned on Keitha in angry scorn.
“And you, you have not even inquired whether he who was your husband is alive or dead! Are we to be assassins for your grudge?”
Keitha said furiously, “I care nothing, truly, whether he lives or dies! Am I to return good for evil like a cristoforo? I have renounced him forever!”
“Not true,” said Mother Lauria. “If you had truly renounced him, you would not fear to know whether he lived or died, and could tend, like Camilla, the wounds of a fallen foe without hatred.”
“She had not suffered at his hands—” Keitha began.
“What do you know of what Camilla has suffered at the hands of men?” Mother Lauria demanded, and Magda remembered what Camilla had told her… had it been only this morning? It seemed so very long ago. Mother Lauria sighed.
“Well, Margali’s wound still bleeds; fortunately, Marisela is still in the house, though I hate to wake her like this when she was up all night. Margali, do you realize what you have done?”
Magda was still fighting the urge to hysterical crying.
“I didn’t know—I did not see that he had surrendered—”
“When you take sword in hand it is your business to know,” said Mother Lauria grimly. “There is no excuse in this world, or the next, for striking down a surrendered man. Name your oath-mother!”
It had the force of a ritual demand; Mother Lauria knew perfectly well what the answer was.
“Jaelle n’ha Melora.”
“You have disgraced her too,” Mother Lauria said, “and when you are well again, she shall deal with you!” She went away, and Magda sat sobbing on the bench. Her leg hurt fiercely, but in her distress she hardly felt it.
“Well, what have we here?” asked Marisela cheerfully, as she came in, and Magda looked up, frightened; would Marisela too think it her duty to scold and browbeat her? She deserved it, whatever they might say or not say. And they would hold Jaelle responsible, and that was the worst!
But Marisela only knelt to examine the cut with gentle, experienced hands. “Nasty, but it will heal; the muscle is not much damaged. I will have to stitch this. Can you help me get her to her room, Keitha? It will be easier to do it there, and afterward, I fear, she will not be in much shape for walking, poor little rabbit.” She stroked Magda’s cheek and added, “This is a miserable thing to happen when you first take sword in our defense. Help her to her room, Keitha, while I fetch my things.”
It was a nightmare of pain and effort, but somehow Keitha got her to her room and into her bed. Magda felt a twinge of fear through the pain, when Marisela came in—in the Terran Zone, she knew, a cut this deep would be sewn under anesthetic! Marisela sponged it with some icy stuff that numbed it slightly, then quickly and skillfully put in several stitches; Magda was by now so unstrung that she could not be brave, but disgraced herself again, she felt, by sobbing like a child. Keitha hugged and comforted her, and Marisela held some kind of fiery cordial to her lips; it made her head swim. Afterward Marisela kissed her on the forehead, said, “I’m sorry I had to hurt you so, breda,” and went away. Keitha sat beside her, holding her hand.
“I don’t care what they say! To me it is no disgrace! They should not bully you that way!”
But now it was over, and the hysteria subsiding, Magda knew what Camilla meant. She had disgraced her steel.
I can’t do anything right, she thought. I was a failure in the Terran Zone, a failure as a wife—I couldn’t even give Peter the son he wanted—now I have failed here too, disgraced Jaelle, disgraced Camilla who taught me—I have failed here too, she thought.
Keitha held her, whispering, “Don’t cry, Margali.” She turned Magda’s head between her hands and kissed her; and to Magda’s dismay and horror, she felt no impulse to push the kiss away; instead her awareness was strange, intense, frighteningly sexual; she felt herself returning it, pulling Keitha closer, even though, in that sudden overwhelming awareness, she knew Keitha had not meant it that way, had meant only to comfort her as she would have kissed her own child, that Keitha would have been horrified if she had had any idea how Margali had interpreted her gesture. She could feel Keitha’s compassion and kindness as a warm flood of soft colors wrapping her, just as she had felt Mother Lauria’s rage, a red halo surrounding her and lashing out to strike…
What was in that stuff Marisela gave me, anyhow? I am drunk, drugged, I am going mad… was this why she had failed with Peter, was it this Camilla had read in her the other night, was this what she really wished for when her defenses were down? Had Peter been right, when he accused her of being half in love with Jaelle herself, and jealous of him?
But she was too exhausted to be afraid. She let herself float, remembering the moment at Ardais when she had been inside the matrix. The bed was floating, it was like being far out in space, swirls of light tracing themselves round and round inside her eyes, faster and faster. For a moment she was back there at Ardais, with Lady Rohana looking up at her, troubled, and saying, If you have trouble with laran you must promise to tell me at once. But how could she, Magda wondered, when Rohana was there and she was here! It seemed that Keitha was calling to her from very far away, but she thought, Keitha is my friend, I do not want to upset or frighten her as I was frightened of Camilla that night, so she hid herself and did not answer. And then there was another face in the darkness, a beautiful woman’s face, pale, surrounded in a cloud of pale reddish-golden hair, and all blue as if she saw it through the color of a pale blue fire, and at the last, yet another face; round, calm, practical, a woman’s face under close-cropped greying hair, an Amazon, saying quietly, We must do something for her, she belongs to us and she does not know it yet.
A Terranan?
She is neither the first nor the last to claim a heritage in an unknown world.
And then the world went away and did not return.
* * *
Part Two: SUNDERING
* * *
CHAPTER ONE
« ^ »
It was snowing. The world outside the high HQ tower, beyond the windows of Cholayna Ares’s office, was lost in a flurry of white, and Jaelle, looking out into it, wished she were outside in
the snow, not in here, in the yellow light, where no hint of natural weather ever penetrated.
Peter saw her look out wistfully into the storm, and pressed her hand. Since the night of Alessandro Li’s reception, he had been gentle, apologetic, tender with her; she could not hold on to her anger, and in the past weeks he had tried, again, to be the man she had loved at once in Sain Scarp, had clung to at Ardais. He had tried, conscientiously tried, in spite of his Terran upbringing, to remember her independence, never to take her for granted. She had begun to hope again; perhaps, perhaps, even if they had lost what first drew them together, they could grow into something stronger and better than before. That first intense sexual glow, I should have understood, I could never expect that to last forever, but now that I am no longer a delayed adolescent in the grip of her first infatuation, perhaps Piedro and I can find something more mature, more genuine. It was not all his fault, either. I have been selfish and childish.
He said gently, “I’d like to be out there, too, walking in the snow,” and for a moment, so great was their attunement, she wondered if perhaps he too had rudimentary laran; many, perhaps most, Terrans did. As they grew closer, perhaps it would develop and she could have with him the kind of understanding she craved.
Cholayna smiled at them both and said with a glimmer of irony, “If you two lovebirds can spare me a moment—” and Peter let go of Jaelle’s hand and she saw the self-conscious color creeping up his face. Cholayna said, “Oh, don’t apologize. I wish I could give you both a year’s leave so you could go off for a proper honeymoon, but conditions really don’t allow it. By now, Magda should have had plenty of time to decide if there are any women in the Thendara Guild House who would be suitable for Medic technicians, and perhaps others we could use here in different employment. What’s the possibility that she could come here to talk about it, Jaelle?”
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