The ‘Graven conferred and discussed noisily. The Eclipsian tradition of hospitality is ingrained and bound by many rules. Where I should eat and with whom was evidently something that philosophers could happily debate for a week. “Lord Zichmni,” Dominic’s voice cut through the babble of thoughts and raised voices, “the lady will faint from hunger while everyone puts forward his claim. Since I maintain my residence here while Assembly is in session, it seems logical to take Ms. Herzog where she will be able to get some ready food.”
Without waiting for the Viceroy’s reply, Dominic stepped into the corridor and sent a message recalling the guards who had escorted me here. Shall I carry you, beloved? he asked on his return.
Dominic’s offer was most attractive until I thought of how undignified it would be, how much legitimate scope it would give the already mocking audience, and regretfully declined.
You must not let those insensitive assholes control your life, Dominic scolded me affectionately in my own Terran idiom, but acquiesced in my decision. I was led on another circuitous route, arriving at last in a large apartment, Dominic’s private living quarters. The rooms were dark, with an elegant martial decorative motif, much like their occupant.
Dominic showed me to a bathroom, waited for me to emerge, then led me to a straight chair and a small table in a side room. “I will order dinner for you,” he said, “but I regret that I may not share the meal.” It would be seen as undue influence for him to spend time alone with me, and he would do nothing more to prejudice the Assembly.
A tall, gruff-looking man entered the room. “Ranulf,” Dominic greeted him with an unusually sweet smile, “Ms. Herzog will take dinner alone, by order of ‘Graven Assembly.” The man was almost as tall as his master, older and with a hard, craggy face. His instinctive distaste at my short hair and Terran clothes was as strong as Dominic’s would have been had it not been tempered by communion. “Ranulf,” Dominic’s voice was mellifluous with reproach, like honey in hot tea, “the lady, as you can perceive from her eyes, is gifted, and she has the hunger of the first time.” He draped a long arm across the man’s broad shoulders, most unusual for a telepath. “Surely you would not wish to add to a lady’s discomfort.”
The man’s face relaxed at Dominic’s strangely intimate way of talking. Ranulf’s smile was in some ways more terrifying than his stern disapproval, but I sensed his unquestioning trust in his master’s judgment. He bowed curtly to me as he departed at Dominic’s request, returning soon, followed by serving women carrying trays of food and drink. I was presented with an array of cold and hot dishes, a pitcher of water, and a pot of steaming liquid. The covers were lifted to show me the contents, then, in fulfillment of the terms Dominic had agreed to, I was left completely alone. I lifted the lid of the pot and sniffed it. It smelled like a cross between burned coffee and turpentine. I decided to stick with the water.
There was far more here than one person could eat—stews and casseroles, bread and deep-fried morsels, vegetables and fruits—spicy and savory, or bland and comforting. It all smelled delicious, and my first bites had the feel in the mouth of real fat, not substitutes; I supposed the butter and cheese on the side plates were genuine also. I ate hurriedly, not knowing how much time I had, tasting some of everything and drinking the entire pitcher of water.
Just as I decided I must be finished, unable to fit one more bite in, Dominic came back, having sensed the moment. “Take your time,” he assured me, seeing me still dithering over the paper-thin slices of smoked meat. “It is poor hospitality that forces a guest to rush through a meal.” He noted approvingly the vast quantity I had ingested. “I see you do not share the usual Terran antipathy to eating,” he said with admiration.
“I’m always hungry,” I admitted.
You burn it up, he said, deliberately touching my mind despite the prohibition. You are a bright flame of crypta. His own fiery gift smoldered between us until we backed away from the heat.
CHAPTER FOUR
The guards escorted me again to the Sanctum for the second part of the test. They were becoming familiar faces to me now, old friends. I exchanged a careful nod with the gifted one, not wanting to get him in more trouble. Dominic turned in suspicion, staring icily from me to the nervous man, before deciding he had nothing to worry about.
Ensconced once more in my place on the dais, I prepared to face another ordeal. “Forgive me, young lady,” Viceroy Zichmni said, “I must ask you some impertinent questions, and you must answer them aloud.”
A clerk had set up a folding table and chair near Lord Zichmni’s bench, had supplied himself with paper and ink, and sat pen in hand, waiting to transcribe the forthcoming dialogue by hand. With no holographic equipment, without even a personal cube, it was the only way to record the proceedings. The clerk was doing the job I had been assigned at yesterday’s meeting, I thought, smiling at him. He stared through me, trained, I suppose, to act as if he were invisible.
Only now did it occur to me that I had been hearing and understanding Eclipsian all day, from the moment Dominic arrived at my apartment. He had used a mix of languages with me, as seemed best to express his meaning, but here in ‘Graven Assembly the only language had been Eclipsian.
Had I been speaking Eclipsian? I must have been, I decided, or someone would have objected. Surrounded by the unimpeded thoughts from the audience, with Dominic’s constant low-level presence in my mind, and with the help of the earlier communion, it seemed I could converse in the language the others were speaking.
I nodded my readiness to Lord Zichmni. Here it comes, I thought, the reason Dominic hadn’t wanted me to be tested. The communion and the physical testing had been straightforward enough. It was these personal inquiries that would offend my sensibilities, Dominic had warned. Remember, he had said, we all go through it. Everyone knows everyone else’s history.
The first question was an anticlimax. “How old are you?” The clerk’s pen made faint scratching noises and fell silent.
“Thirty-five. And a half,” I added as I sensed incredulity around me, heard muttering, a combination of grumbling thoughts and low-voiced discussion. Understanding penetrated slowly. Eclipsians are legally adults at sixteen, considered middle-aged in their thirties. I had been taken to be younger than my real age, not for any flattering assessment of my appearance, but merely because I was being tested for my gift, a ritual of adolescence. Hearing the truth, no matter that they may already have seen it for themselves, people felt like the victims of a calculated deception.
Lord Zichmni called for silence and continued his questioning. “Are you now, or have you ever been married?” When I answered negatively he followed up, “Betrothed?”
What a quaint notion. “No,” I answered, smiling but otherwise restraining myself from showing what was almost disappointment at how overblown my fears had been. My relief was premature.
The Viceroy cleared his throat. “Young mistress,” he began, discomfort audible in his voice at the incongruous honorific the language required, “I must ask you now to answer honestly, as you have answered the other questions, no matter if you find it offensive or distasteful.”
Again I nodded, seeing the question in his mind before he spoke, hating to have to stand there waiting for the words to emerge and be copied down by the clerk.
“Have you ever had carnal relations with a man?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. My voice shook and I felt myself blushing. There was no reason to be ashamed, yet it seemed barbaric to be announcing this in front of a roomful of people.
Lord Zichmni nodded in satisfaction at my answer. He stared doubtfully at my waistline, clearly defined in the stretch fabric of my suit. “Well then,” he said, “how many children do you have, born of your body?” That was exactly how he phrased it: “Born of your body.” There was silence as everyone awaited my answer to this question.
“None,” I answered, delighted to have reached the end of this bizarre interrogation.
The au
dience erupted with noise at my answer. “How many times?” a man shouted, and nobody shushed him. “How many men?” another asked, and was backed up by a third. The almost all-male Assembly seemed to have become a bloodthirsty mob out for some kind of revenge, for a crime I didn’t understand or know I had committed.
Lord Zichmni rose to his feet, shouting for order. The clerk was not writing any of this down, as he was restricted to recording only the Viceroy’s questions and my responses. He stared straight ahead, laying his pen down beside the paper.
Gradually the room quieted as Lord Zichmni continued to stand. When he could be heard without straining, he smiled grimly at me. “Well, young mistress,” he said, “the others have taken the words out of my mouth, but I must ask you formally. With how many men have you been intimate?”
I literally gaped at him, my jaw dropping until I almost choked from the mouth-breathing dryness.
“Take your time,” he said, “but you must tell us the truth, you know, if you wish to continue with this test.”
I looked out over the heads of the audience that seemed to hate me so. They were all a blur, tears of humiliation obscuring my vision. Why am I doing this? I wondered. Why subject myself to this shit? Why don’t I just turn around and leave?
Beloved, Dominic’s voice was in my mind. It is not what you think. Speak the truth and get it over with. No one thinks shame of you.
I shut my mouth with a snap. “Four,” I answered. A pathetic total for twenty years of adulthood. And that was counting the one time with a stranger, after a drinking party in my first year of college. “That’s all,” I added. “Four.” The clerk wrote my answer exactly as I spoke it. I heard his pen stop after the first “four,” then pick up again when I said, “That’s all.”
But it was not all. Once again the room exploded into uproar. “Four!” someone shouted. “That finishes it.” “No hope,” another man agreed. “I’d take a chance even on two, but four!” The women I could see shook their heads sadly, and from the back, where the rest of the women sat behind their partition, there came a wailing as if someone had died.
The Viceroy was not willing to give up. “We will find out everything,” he assured his unhappy audience. “It may be there are facts we do not yet know.” Despite the obvious derision of the men, he persevered, waiting patiently for quiet. “Young mistress.” His voice was sad and gentle. “Did you ever seek treatment for your infertility? Is it perhaps something that could be cured?” I read the thoughts behind the sympathetic words, the gloomy certainty that if the renowned Terran treatments for infertility had failed, I was indeed a hopeless case.
I stared blankly for a long couple of minutes. “I used birth control,” I said, laughing with hysterical relief at the misunderstanding. “Contraception.” I supplied the Terran term, finding no Eclipsian equivalent in my limited vocabulary. The clerk looked up, for the first time in his entire career, I was sure, hearing a word he didn’t know and couldn’t spell.
The ‘Graven were equally mystified. Contra what? How do you ‘control’ birth? Only the women grasped the basic principle, but they were just as confused by the larger implications.
Lord Zichmni’s face turned bright red, and for a moment all eyes were on him as people worried he was going to faint or have a stroke. He waved away the offers of help, but accepted the glass of water that a guard brought. When he could speak, Lord Zichmni was both stern and more at ease. “Young mistress,” he said, “for the benefit of those like me, and for our poor clerk here, please explain in simple language what this ‘contracept’ is, and how you ‘control’ birth.”
I turned to Dominic, hoping that he would get me out of this, but he was waiting like the rest. I sensed a certain curiosity in him, admiration and even a kind of envy. There was no help to be had from him. My tongue stumbled over the words, but eventually I got the idea across, the chemicals that prevent ovulation, the freedom from the monthly periods, the opportunity to enjoy sexual relationships with men without fear of pregnancy.
There was silence as I finished. Most people had followed the straightforward science; as Dominic had told me, the ‘Graven have studied the biology of reproduction out of necessity. “But why?” a man shouted. A woman began to explain, but the man cut her off. “Yes,” he said, “I understand if she had a dozen already, but she has none. I’ve never heard of a woman not wanting any children.”
It was Lord Zichmni who finally got to the heart of it. “So it is this contraception that has made you sterile?” he asked.
“Not sterile,” I answered. “It only works while you use it. Once you stop using it you can try to conceive.” Of course I had no idea if I was fertile to begin with, never having wanted to be.
The Assembly’s disposition improved radically. Here was something people could understand. “It’s as if she’s a virgin,” they told each other. “She’s only had sex with this potion to keep her womb empty.”
My uneasiness only increased along with the rising elation of the Assembly as I heard the speculative thoughts around me, all from men, sizing me up as a potential breeder.
Still a few years left. One man put forth a generous opinion. My aunt gave birth at forty-seven. Another contributed a fact in my favor. Yes, but not her first, a third argued. No, the nephew answered. Her tenth. Was it healthy? Gifted? others wanted to know. Oh yes, the nephew assured them. Big and strong, and handy with the prisms—you know my cousin Arturo—she died birthing him.
I spun around, glaring at the callous men and their unspeakable thoughts. A group of them turned away, hastily closing off their minds from me.
Dominic’s reassuring presence was with me. They are pigs, he said. Barbarians. Don’t let them frighten you. I will make sure they keep their distance. He stood up, his hand moving toward the weapon at his hip.
One of the men glanced over his shoulder, saw Dominic and signaled the others. They fell into an uneasy silence, although one was bold or careless enough to let a dangerous thought escape him. It’s all right for you, he groused at Dominic, with your adopted heir and your natural son.
Dominic moved so swiftly I was as surprised as the man was when he looked up to see his adversary almost on top of him. “Shall I make you eat your words here and now?” Dominic spoke in an undertone. His sword was halfway out of the scabbard. “Or would you prefer to rephrase your sentiment?”
The man had gone pale with Dominic’s sudden approach. He was a large, powerful-looking individual, yet he seemed terrified of Dominic’s abrupt challenge. “Margrave, I meant no offense.” He smiled a shit-eating grin. “It is only natural to wish to share a windfall.”
The scrape of Dominic’s sword being pulled from its sheath startled me; the swoop of it cutting the air inches from the man’s face made most of us jump. “That was not the retraction I expected,” Dominic said.
The Viceroy had been calling for quiet for some time. “Margrave Aranyi,” he said. “Whatever the offense, I request that you permit Sir Mikal Hattori to live another day.” Despite his mild tone, the words were an order.
Dominic glowered at the Viceroy but bowed his compliance. “Until tomorrow,” he warned Sir Mikal in a whisper as he returned the sword to its scabbard. “Enjoy your last supper tonight.”
Sir Mikal was regretting his foot-in-mouth disease. “I will apologize later, Margrave,” he promised.
Lord Zichmni resumed control. “Thank you,” he said when he could be heard at last. “Some of us would like to be done in one day.” He used the familiar, kind voice to me as he explained what would happen next. There would be a period of debate. Every member of a ‘Graven family was allowed to express an opinion; only those who held a seat in the Assembly could cast a vote. Yes, that I possessed crypta and should be treated as ‘Graven; or No to both propositions.
For what seemed like the hundredth time I was escorted by Dominic’s guards, minus the gifted one who must stay for the debate and vote. Once again I sat alone in Dominic’s rooms. I barely had time to
admire the array of weapons arranged in swirling patterns on the walls before I was called back to hear the results.
I stood before the Assembly, heard the verdict that was like a finding of guilt. Gifted, status uncertain. A split decision. Like them, but not really one of them. Not even the most skeptical had doubted the power of my gift, but they had deadlocked on the next step.
“You have no family, young mistress?” Lord Zichmni inquired in an afterthought. “No brother, not even a cousin?”
My negative answers were a formality, taken for granted.
“You see,” Lord Zichmni continued, “as an unmarried woman, not ‘Graven by birth, you have no ties of kinship. We are eleven families here, twelve if we include our absent contingent from Andrade.” He nodded at the section of empty seats. “None of us has the right to be your advocate until we can decide on the best place for you.”
I turned to look at Dominic. He had sworn yesterday to protect me, to defend my choice, although so far I had not been offered any alternatives.
Dominic stood up. “Viceroy,” he said, “I repeat that I am willing to act as Ms. Herzog’s guardian—”
“Sit down!” Lord Zichmni said. “I refuse to go over this again.”
The others jeered openly at Dominic. “The wolf guarding the sheepfold,” they laughed. “The bull guarding the heifers.” Unlike Sir Mikal’s indiscretion, these insults were apparently part of the debate, as Dominic endured them in silence, clenching his jaw but not answering back.
In the suspenseful atmosphere of a trial awaiting the judge’s pronouncement of the sentence, Lady Ertegun approached Lord Zichmni. “Then I, too, will repeat my request,” she said, glaring out at the Assembly, daring anyone to challenge her. The others deferred to her position. There were impatient mutters, but no open threats. Lord Zichmni signaled his permission.
The sibyl reworked her frown into a surprisingly warm smile as she addressed me. “You have great potential,” she said. “I can say unreservedly that should you wish to train at La Sapienza Seminary and Signal Station you will be welcome.”
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