Glory Season

The bridge was definitely worse. Stepping forward cautiously, Maia took hold of the guide rope, which stretched across the ravine at waist level. She worked her way from handhold to handhold and plank to groaning plank, fearing at any moment to hear a shout of pursuit behind her, or the snap of some cable giving way. Eerie silence added further discomfort, driving home her loneliness.

Finally, on reaching the other side, she leaned against one of the anchor pillars and let out a ragged sigh. From the promontory, Maia surveyed the trail down which she had come. There was no sign of any full-scale search party, whose lights would be visible for kilometers. You're probably making more of this than it deserves, she thought. To them you're just a stupid var who stuck her nose where it didn't belong. Lay low for a while and they'll forget all about you.

It made sense. But then, maybe she was too stupid to know how much trouble she was in. Standing there, Maia felt the wind grow colder. Her fingers were numb, almost paralyzed, even when she blew on them. Shivering, she rubbed her hands and began peering among the furnaces and cliffside warehouses for the mansion where this branch of Lerner Clan dwelled and raised its daughters.

The house was a disappointment when she found it. She had envisioned the industrial Lerners constructing an imposing structure of steel arches, lined with stone or glass. What she came upon was a one-story warren, made of sod bricks, that rambled over half an acre. Just a few windows faced a front courtyard strewn with scrap and reclaimed junk of every description.

The windows were dark. If not for the soft hissing of the idle furnaces — and the odors — Maia might have thought the place deserted.

There was another sound, she realized. A faint one. Maia turned. She stepped carefully through the scrapyard until, rounding a corner of the house, she came in sight of a jumble of low structures, even more ramshackle than the "mansion." Each had a small chimney from which trailed thin columns of smoke. Housing for the employees, she guessed.

One of these dwellings, set apart from the rest, seemed different. Dim light from the narrow curtained window illuminated a raked gravel path . . . and a small bed of neatly tended flowers. Approaching, Maia made out soft strains of music coming from within. She also smelled the aromas of cooking.

By the time she reached the door, Maia was shivering too much from the cold to be shy about lifting her hand and knocking.

Since taking jobs with the foundry only a month before, Thalia and Kiel had transformed the little cabin at the far end of the workers' compound. "You'll give up that foolishness soon enough," the other employees had said. But the two young women faithfully set aside an hour each day, even after long, grueling shifts at the furnaces, to tend their garden and put their frayed house in order.

It had been tall, broad-shouldered Thalia who opened the door that night, clucking in concern and drawing Maia inside, putting her with a blanket and steaming teacup by the smoldering peat fire. Kiel, with her almost-pure black complexion and startlingly pale eyes, was the one who went to the Lerner clan mothers the next morning, and returned shortly with word that Maia could stay.

Naturally, she would have to work. "You'll start in the scrap pile," Kiel announced the morning after Maia's flight from Jopland Hold. "Then you're to spend a week learning how to shovel and ladle with the rest of us. Calma Lerner says if you're still around after that, she'll talk to you about an after-hours 'prenticeship in the alloys lab."

The black woman laughed scornfully. "A 'prentice-ship. Now that's a good one!"

Laboring for a clan of smiths wasn't the life path Maia would have chosen. But barring some brilliant strategy to get to Grange Head without crossing paths with Tizbe's gang, or the Joplands, it would have to do. Anyway, it was honorable work.

"What's wrong with an apprenticeship," she asked the older girl. "I thought—"

"You thought it was a way up the ladder, right." Kiel waved a scarred, callused hand in dismissal. "Maybe in a fancy city, where you can hire a clone from some lawyer hive to go over your contract for you. But here? I guess you don't know what 'after hours' means at Lerner Hold, do you?"

Maia shook her head.

"It means you get no wages for 'prentice time, no room-and-board points. In fact, you pay for the privilege of workin' extra in their lab. They charge you, for lessons!"

"No quicker way into debtor's trap," Thalia agreed. "Except gambling."

Debtor's Trap was something Thalia and Kiel talked about all the time, as if they feared falling into bad habits if they ever let the subject drop. Only constant attention and thriftiness would let them prevail. Along with weeding the garden and sweeping the floor, the two young women ritually counted their credit sticks each night.