Glory Season (36 page)

A faint clatter—pebbles rolling down a slope—banished sleep and crystallized intent as she sat up. Slipping on her shoes, Maia crawled away from Thalla’s still form before standing and walking toward the source of the sound, somewhere upstream, where the surrounding bluffs had crumbled to give way to sloping ground. A flash of movement caught her eye, rounding the nearest hillock. She headed in that direction and was soon clambering over boulders, washed ice-smooth by successive summer floods.

The widening canyon offered less shelter from the cold. Maia exhaled fog and her fingertips grew numb from grabbing handholds lined with frost. A vaguely familiar scent made her nostrils flare, drawing her back to winters
in Lamatia Hold, when Leie used to throw open the shutters on wintry mornings, thumping her chest, and inhaling the frigid air while Maia complained and burrowed in the covers. The unbeckoned memory brought a faint, sad smile as she climbed.

Maia stopped, listened. There was a scrape, a stone rattling downslope somewhere ahead and to her right. The way looked tricky. She paused, feeling torn between curiosity and a growing awareness of her replete bladder. Now that she was fully awake, it did seem a bit pointless, following people who were obviously out doing what she herself ought to find a place and do.
Let’s just take care of business, eh?
She began casting about for a convenient niche out of the wind.

The first spot she tried already had an occupant. Or occupants. A hissing squeal made Maia jump back in fright as a living
rainbow
flapped at her. She hurriedly retreated from the crevice where a mother zim-skimmer was tending its young—a cluster of tiny gasbags that inflated and deflated rapidly, wheezing in imitation of their belligerent dam. Smaller cousins of zoor-floaters, the skimmers had much worse temperaments, and poison quills that fended off Earth-descended birds seeking their tender flesh. The spines caused fierce allergic rashes, if a human was unlucky enough to brush one. Maia backed away, eyeing the deceptively diaphanous forms. Once safely out of sight, she turned and hurried along the half trail.

That was when, rounding a corner, she caught sight of someone just ahead.

Baltha
.

The tall woman squatted, peering over a set of boulders at something downslope, out of Maia’s view. On the ground beside the var lay a small camp spade and a lidded wooden box, small enough to cover with one hand. While Baltha stared ahead intently, she idly reached out to brush
a nearby rock, then brought her fingers to her face, sniffing.

Maia blinked.
Of course
. She scanned the ledges closest to her and saw, amid thin patches of normal white snow, streaks that shone with a diamondlike glitter.
Glory frost. It’s winter, all right
. The march of seasons had more effect on high, stratospheric winds than on the massive bulk of sea and land and air below. Varieties of turbulence unknown on other worlds recycled water vapor through ionic fluxes until an adenated ice formed. Occasionally, the crystals made their way to ground in soft, predawn hazes, as unique a sign of winter as Wengel Star’s flamboyant aurorae were to summer. Maia stretched toward the nearest sprinkling of glory frost. Static charge drew the shiny pseudogems to her fingertips, which tingled despite their morning numbness. Purple and golden highlights sparkled under innumerable facets as she turned them in the light. A visible vapor of sublimation rose from the points of contact.

In winters past, whenever glory had appeared on their sill, Maia and Leie used to giggle and try inhaling or tasting the fine, luminescent snow. The first time, she, not her sister, had been the bold one. “They say it’s just for grownups,” Leie had said nervously, parroting the mothers’ lessons. Of course that only made it more enticing.

The effects were disappointing. Other than a faint fizzing sensation that tickled the nose, the twins never felt anything abnormal or provocative.

But I’m older now
, Maia reflected, watching her body heat turn fine powder into steam. There was something faintly different about the aroma, this time. At least, she could swear …

A sound sent her ducking for cover. It was a low whistling. A man—Renna, of course—could be heard tramping some distance away. Soon he came into sight,
emerging from one of the countless side tributaries that would feed the river during the rainy season. He, too, carried a camp shovel and a bundle of takawq leaves, making the purpose of his errand obvious.

Why did he go so far from camp, then?
Maia wondered.
Is he that shy?

And why is Baltha spying on him?

Maybe the tall var feared the Outsider would run away, trying to contact the Caria City forces that flew over last night. If so, Baltha must be relieved to see Renna pass by, whistling odd melodies on his way back to camp.
Don’t worry, your reward is safe
, Maia thought, preparing to duck out of sight. She had a perfect right to be here, but no good would come of antagonizing the older woman, or being caught spying, herself.

But to Maia’s surprise, the blonde did not turn to follow Renna downhill. Rather, as soon as he was gone, Baltha picked up her box and shovel and slipped over the shielding rocks to clamber down the other side, hurrying in the direction from which the man had just come. Possessed by curiosity, Maia crept forward to use the same outcrop that had served as Baltha’s eyrie.

The rugged woman strode east about twenty meters to a niche just above the high-water line. There she used the camp spade to dig at a mound of freshly disturbed soil and begin filling the small box.
What in atyp chaos is she doing?
Maia wondered.

“Hey, everybody!” The shout, coming from downstream, caused Maia to leap half out of her skin. “Baltha! Maia! Breakfast!”

It was only Thalla, calling cheerily from the campsite. Another Lysos-cursed morning person. Maia backed out of sight before Baltha could look around. Remembering to give the mother zimmer a wide berth, she started scrambling back down the eroded slope.

•  •  •

The meal consisted of cheese and biscuits, stone-warmed on rocks taken from the fire. By now it was late morning, and since it was probably safe to travel by daylight in these deep canyons, all five travelers were back in the saddle before the sun rose much above the cavern’s southeast rim. They made good time, despite having to stop every half hour to warm the horses’ feet.

About an hour after noon, Maia realized something ill-smelling and foul-colored had entered the stream. “What is it?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.

Thalla laughed. “She wonders what the bad smell is! How soon we forget pain when we’re young!”

Kiel, too, shook her head, grinning. Maia inhaled again, and suddenly recalled. “Lerners! Of course. They dump their slag into a side canyon, and we must be passing—”

“Just downstream. Helps navigation, don’t it? See, we’re doin’ all right without your fancy stars to guide us.”

Maia felt overwhelming resurgent resentment toward her former employers. “Damn them!” She swore. “Lysos curse the Lerners! I hope their whole place burns down!”

Renna, who had been riding to her right, frowned at her outburst. “Maia, listen to yourself. You can’t mean—”

“I don’t care!” She shook her head, afroth with pent-up anger. “Calma Lerner handed me over to Tizbe’s gang like I was a slab of pig iron on sale. I hope she rots!”

Thalla and Kiel looked at each other uncomfortably. Maia felt a delicious, if vile, thrill at having shocked them. Renna pressed his lips and kept silent. But Baltha responded more openly, reigning up and laughing sardonically. “From your mouth to Stratos Mother’s ear, virgie!” She reached into one of her saddlebags and drew forth a slender, leather-bound tube, her telescope. “Here you go.”

Puzzled, Maia overcame sudden reluctance in reaching for the instrument. She lifted it to peer where Baltha pointed. “Go on, up at that slope, yonder to the west an’ a bit north. Along the ridgeline. That’s right. See it?”

While she learned to compensate for the horse’s gentle breathing, the telescope showed little but jumbled images, shifting blurs. Finally, Maia caught a flash of color and steadied on a jittering swatch of bright fabric, snapping in the wind, yanking at a tall, swaying pole. She scanned and other flags came into view on each side.

“Prayer banners,” she identified at last. On most of Stratos they were used for holidays and ceremonies, but in Perkinite areas, she knew, they were also flown to signify new births—

—and deaths.

“There’s yer Calma Lerner up there, virgie. Rotting, just like you asked. Along with half her sisters. Gonna be short on steel in the valley, next year or two, I figure.”

Maia swallowed. “But … how?” She turned to Kiel and Thalla, who looked down at their traces. “What happened?” she demanded.

Thalla shrugged. “Just a flu bug, Maia. Was a rash of sneezing in town, a week or two before, no big deal. When it reached the hold, one of the var workers got laid up a few days, but …”

“But then, a whole bunch of Lerners went and popped off. Just like that!” Baltha exclaimed, snapping her fingers with relish.

Maia felt dreadful—a hollowness in her belly and thickness in her throat—even as she fought to show no reaction at all. She knew her expression must seem stony, cold. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Renna briefly shiver.

I can’t blame him. I’m terrible.

She recalled how, as a child, she used to be frightened by macabre stories the younger Lamai mothers loved telling
summer brats on warm evenings, up on the parapets. Often, the moral of the gruesome tales seemed to be “Careful what you wish for. Sometime you might get it.” Rationally, Maia knew her outburst of anger had not caused death to strike the metallurgist clan. Yet, it was dismaying, the vengeful streak she’d shown. Moments ago, if she could have done anything to cast misfortune on her enemies, she would have shown no pity. Was that morally the same as if she’d killed the Lerners herself?

It’s not unheard-of for sickness to wipe out half a clan
, she thought, trying to make sense of it all. There was a saying, “When one clone sneezes, her sisters go for handkerchiefs.” It drew on a fact of life Leie and Maia had learned well as twins—that susceptibility to illness was often in the genes. In this case, it hadn’t helped that Lerner Hold was far from what medical care existed in Long Valley. With all of them presumably laid up at the same time, who would care for the Lerners? Just var employees, who weren’t brimming with affection for their contract-holders.

What a way to go … all at once, broken by the thing you’re most proud of, your uniformity
.

The group resumed riding silently, immersed in their own thoughts. A while later, when Maia turned to Renna in hope of distraction, the man from space just stared ahead as his mount slogged along, his eyebrows furrowed in what seemed a solid line of dark contemplation.

They slipped out of the maze of canyons after nightfall, climbing a narrow trail south and west of the dark, silent Lerner furnaces. Despite the lower temperatures out on the plain, emerging into the open came as a relief. Starlight spread across the prairie sky, and one of the smaller moons, good-luck Iris, shone cheerily, lifting their spirits.

Thalla and Kiel jumped from their mounts on spotting a large patch of glory frost, protected by the northern
shadow of a boulder. They rolled in the stuff, pushing it in each other’s faces, laughing. When they remounted, Maia saw a light in their eyes, and wasn’t sure she liked it. She approved even less when each of them started jockeying to ride near Renna, occasionally brushing his knee, engaging him in conversation and making interested sounds at whatever he said in reply.

Alone with her thoughts, Maia did not even look up to measure the constellations’ progress. She had the impression it would be many days yet before they would catch sight of the coastal range and begin seeking a pass to the sea. Assuming, of course, they weren’t spotted by Perkinites along the way.

And then? Even if we make it to Grange Head? Then what?

Freedom had its own penalties. In prison, Maia had known what to expect from one day to the next. Going back to being a poor young var, searching for a niche in an unwelcoming world, was more frightening than jail in some ways. Maia was only now coming to realize how she had been crippled by being a twin. Rather than the advantage she had imagined it to be, that accident of biology had let her live in fantasies, assuming there would always be someone to put her back against. Other summer girls left home knowing the truth, that no plan, no friendship, no talent, would ever by itself make your dreams come true. For the rest, you needed luck.

After having ridden most of the day and half the night, they made camp once more in the shelter of a gully. Kiel managed to start a fire with sticks gathered near the bone-dry watercourse. Except for cups of hot tea, they ate supper cold from the dwindling larder in their saddlebags.

As the others made ready for bed, Renna gathered several small items from his blue pouch. One was a slender brush of a kind Maia had never seen before. He also picked up a camp spade, a canteen, and takawq leaves
before turning to leave. Baltha seemed uninterested, and Maia wondered, was it because there was no place he could escape to in this vast plain? Or had Baltha already gotten what she wanted from him? Maia had intended to pull Renna aside and tell him about the southerner’s strange actions, the morning before, but it had slipped her mind. Now, her feelings toward him were ambivalent again, especially with Thalla and Kiel still acting decidedly wintry.

“Don’t get lost out there!” Thalla called to Renna. “Want me to come along and hold your hand?”

“That may not be what needs holding,” Kiel commented, and the other vars laughed. All except Maia. She was bothered by Renna’s reaction to the kidding. He blushed, and was obviously embarrassed. He also seemed to enjoy the attention.

“Here,” Kiel said, tossing her penlight. “Don’t confuse it with anything else!”

Maia winced at the crude humor, but the others thought it terribly funny. Renna peered at the cylindrical wooden case with the switch and lens at one end. He shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll have any trouble telling the difference.” The three older women laughed again.