Glory Season

"Urn," she began, lowering her voice. "You know that trouble I got in at Jopland Hold?"

"The mess you didn't want to talk about?" Thalia leaned forward eagerly. "I been putting one an' three together and have got a theory. My guess is you tried crashing that party they held a couple weeks back, sneaking in to get yourself a man without payin'!" Thalia guffawed until Kiel pushed her arm and shushed her. "Go on, Maia. Tell us if you feel ready."

Maia took a deep breath. "Well, it seems at least some of the Perkinites have found a way to get what they want. …"

She went on to tell the whole story, feeling a growing satisfaction as her companions' eyes widened with each revelation. They had categorized her as some sweet, helpless young thing to be given sisterly protection, not an adventuress who had already been through more excitement and danger than most saw in a lifetime. When she finished, the other two turned to look at each other. "Do you think we should—" Thalia began.

Kiel shook her head curtly. "Maybe. We'll talk about it tomorrow. Right now it's late. Past a fiver's bedtime, no matter what a born pirate she's turned out to be." Kiel gave Maia's ragged haircut a friendly tousle, one that conveyed newfound respect in an offhand way. "Let's all kick in," she concluded, and reached over to turn off the radio.

When the light was out and all three of them had settled into their cots, Maia lay still for a long time, thinking. Me? A born pirate?

Yet, why not? With her tender muscles starting to throb less and tauten more each passing day, Maia was toughening more than she had ever thought possible. And now, listening to rebel radio stations? Sharing police business with homeless, radical vars?

What next? she wondered. If only Leie could see me now.

Suddenly, all her newfound toughness was no bulwark against resurgent grief. Maia had to bear down in order not to sniffle aloud. Damn, she thought. Damn it all to patarkal hell. The kindness of her housemates only made her more vulnerable, it seemed, by easing the numbness she had wrapped herself in since leaving the temple at Grange Head. Maybe I'd be better off alone, after all.

From neighboring cottages could be heard the rattle of dice and hoarse laughter, even a snatch of bawdy song. But it was quiet in their hut until Thalia began snoring, low and rhythmically. A while later, Maia heard Kiel get up. Although Maia kept her eyes closed, she felt eerily certain the older woman was watching her. Then there came the creaking of the front door as Kiel slipped outside. Half-asleep, Maia presumed the dark girl had gone to visit the outhouse, but by morning she had still not returned.

Thalia didn't seem worried. "Business in town," she explained tersely. "Greersday wagon'll be full of wrought iron, so no passengers, but we got a couple of investments to look after, the two of us. Places we put our money so's it won't evaporate out here. That happens, y'know. Coin-sticks just vanish. I wouldn't leave mine under my pillow, if I was you."

Maia blinked, wondering how Thalia knew. Had she looked? Suppressing an urge to rush back to the cot and check her tiny stash, Maia also took note how deftly the older var had managed to change the subject. None of my business, I suppose, she thought with a sniff.

Work continued at the same steady, numbing pace. On her eighteenth day at Lerner Hold, Maia and most of the other workers were assigned to haul barrowloads of preprocessed iron ore from a mine two miles away, staffed entirely by a clan of albino women whose natural pallor had become tinted by rusty oxides, permeating their skin.

The next day, a caravan of huge dray-llamas arrived, carrying charcoal for refining the ore. Tall gaunt-eyed women tended the beasts, but took no part in unloading which, apparently, was beneath their dignity. Maia joined the team of vars lugging bag after heavy bag of sooty black chunks to a shed by the furnaces, while an elderly Lerner paid off the teamsters in new-forged metal. Within a few hours, the caravan was heading back up country. Their journey would take them past three distant, stony pillars that gave the northeast horizon its character, and onward toward barely visible peaks where yet another clan filled a small but thriving niche — cutting trees and cooking them into ebony-colored, log-shaped, carbon briquettes. It was a simpleminded rustic economy. One that functioned, though, with no space left for newcomers.

Afterward, while sponging away layers of grime, Maia patiently endured another of Calma Lerner's daily visits. The clanswoman "dropped by" each evening, just before supper, with an obstinacy Maia was starting to respect. She would not take no for an answer.

"Look, I can tell you have an educated background for a summer child. Come from a classy line of mothers, I reckon. Ought to do something with your life, you really should."