Rediscovery (22 page)

decided to go ahead and get married, delaying any children until the planet’s status was decided. “We are just tired of waiting,” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense anymore.

I’m not even sure if it matters whether this world is Open or Closed. I’m not even sure why we waited so long in the first place—it seems pretty senseless now. And, Ysaye,”

she asked, “will you be my maid of honor?”

“Of course,” Ysaye replied, hugging her. “Where and when?”

The wedding—for Elizabeth told her that they had spoken both to Captain

Gibbons, and to the chaplain, either of whom were empowered to marry ship’s

personnel anywhere in the Empire, and had decided on the chaplain, who wanted them to wait the traditional three days for “cooling off”—was set for three days in the future.

“Three days doesn’t matter much when you’ve been waiting three years,” David had said philosophically. Ysaye agreed.

So now, besides their other duties, she and Elizabeth had a wedding to prepare.

Not a fancy one, for after all, this was not a bulwark of the Social Registry, it was a survey ship— but nearly everyone on the ship would want to come, and they would be severely disappointed if there weren’t some kind of celebration. Most people didn’t know Elizabeth well, for she kept to herself a great deal—but David was popular with most of the Ship’s personnel.

One more thing,
Ysaye thought to herself.

But Elizabeth was happy—and considerably less tense. Finally the waiting was

over.

Then came a development she hadn’t expected. The natives took an interest in the proceedings. Aldaran—and Felicia—asked a good many questions about their marriage customs, and even offered the use of the Great Hall and the castle servants to help with the celebration. This was an unexpected bonus for Elizabeth’s work, for she had begun to see herself as an interface between their two cultures; and she was entirely ready to have the natives participate in this part of her life.

The wedding would be the first event scheduled for the ship’s company on the

new world, and it seemed fitting that it be a ceremony involving both the Terrans and the natives.

After discussion with David and Ysaye, she accepted Aldaran’s invitation, for the ceremony to be held in his Great Hall. Now that he and the ship’s company had a

language in common, he had lost no time in extending any number of invitations, but this was the most practical one to accept— and the one with the least number of

metaphorical strings attached. Elizabeth spent her time between planning every detail of the wedding, and categorizing every new facet of the native culture she ran across. And in little bits of spare time, she could be found gleefully cataloguing folksongs and checking them against the library copies, exulting over every shifted half note, every major key that had somehow over the years mutated into minor, checking out lute

sounds on the synthesizer, recording new sounds to be synthesized.

When Ysaye asked her why she was spending so much time on cataloging music,

she protested that it had everything to do with her major specialty. Folk songs and the changes in them, she insisted, indicated deep rooted changes in the society, and changes in the people’s psychology. She pointed out that of the overwhelming number of ancient Gaelic songs which dealt with the sea, hardly a single one had survived into the present native culture, probably because the lifestyle of these people did not include a sea, or anything like one, as they were surrounded by the mountains. She mentioned especially one long-known song about seagulls, which had become a sad love song; the words had somehow mutated from a refrain based on the cries of the gulls to the sad sound of wind in the trees, and the cries of birds of prey. The original words had become, not seagull cries, but the sad refrain: “Where are you now?/Where does my love wander?”

Ysaye had shrugged. “I hope that Empire Central feels the same way,” she had

warned, “or you’re likely to do very poorly on your next status review.”

But somehow she didn’t think that mattered much to Elizabeth, at least, not now.

On the morning of the wedding Ysaye stood in the Great Hall, showing the

servants where to set up the table which would serve, covered with a length of spotless white polysilk, as an altar. The whole ship’s company would be there, and most of Aldaran’s people.

When Ysaye had asked why so many of his people—who wouldn’t even

understand the tongue the ceremony was spoken in—had wanted to attend, he had said, with a sly twinkle in his eye, “Any excuse will do for a festive occasion; a wedding is as good as any, and better than most.”

He had made another offer to Elizabeth as well. “I will give you away if there are none of your kinfolk present.”

Elizabeth had thanked him and refused, telling him it was not their custom for a bride to be given away by her kinfolk. “Personally,” she told Ysaye privately, “though I would never have said so to Lord Aldaran, I find the custom rather degrading, as if one were property, rather than a person. But I know he intended a real honor.”

Ysaye remembered that conversation as Lord Aldaran entered and asked her if

everything were satisfactory. “Yes, sir,” she replied, casting her eyes over the surprising displays, not only of evergreens from the forest, but of real flowers from what she
thought
one of the servants had said was a hothouse. “Everything is beautiful. We are deeply appreciative of your kindness and generosity.”

She looked around one final time, checking the details. Perhaps, she thought, he would be doing this again in the near future. The girl Mariel, who had been with Felicia the first night they arrived—was she his daughter? No, she was too old for that, must be his sister, his niece, or his cousin. These days Mariel seemed to be always with Lorill Hastur. Ysaye wondered what was between them; they certainly seemed to spend a lot of time laughing in corners.

Ysaye suppressed a smile as she found an unsought picture in her mind, of

Aldaran charging up to young Hastur and demanding, like some patriarch in an old-time drama, to know what his intentions were.

And if he did? What would that arrogant young aristocrat answer? And was any of

it her business anyway?

She looked up to find Aldaran staring at her oddly.

“I will speak to Lorill Hastur,” he said, his face betraying nothing. Then he turned on his heel and left her standing in the middle of the Hall.

She stared after him, alarmed by the sudden change in his demeanor and his

expression. Her hand went to her lips in an unconscious gesture of alarm, as she realized that the change had followed on the heels of her thoughts about the Hastur boy and young Mariel.

Had he followed her thoughts?

And what was he going to do, if he had?

Leonie had gone to sleep exhausted, with no thought for anything
but
sleep. She hadn’t even noticed whether her bed was warmed; she didn’t even feel her head

touching the pillow. Certainly she had no interest tonight in the strangers at Aldaran, not after the workday she had just been through.

Days—or was it a tenday?—ago, Fiora had found her idling her time away in the

garden, watching the two younger girls playing on the swing, and had asked her if she had nothing else to do. She had been feeling a little superior to the younger girls, because she had once again been allowed to help in the relays. Fiora’s question had come as something of a surprise.

“I do not,” Leonie had replied, truthfully. Fiora had smiled then, and had asked her sweetly (too sweetly, she thought now), if she, Leonie, considered herself capable of an accelerated form of the teaching usually given a
leronis.
“For you told me you aspired to be a Keeper,” Fiora told her. “And it seems we may have need of a new Keeper sooner than we thought. Even if we do not, well, it will do no harm to have someone Keeper-trained and ready to step in where she is needed.”

Fiora did not tell her
where
the new Keeper would be needed, nor did she say how soon—and indeed, it was possible for there to be more than one Keeper at a Tower. In fact, it was a desirable state, though one not often achieved these days, when so many of the young women of the Comyn were pulled out of the Towers to make advantageous

marriages for their families, to breed more sons and daughters for their caste. Leonie did not think that Fiora meant for her to be under-Keeper to someone else, however.

Something about Fiora’s thoughts, so carefully guarded, gave her the impression that there was a great deal more going on than Fiora was willing to tell her.

So when Fiora had offered the new teaching, phrasing it as a challenge—then had

implied that this might be Leonie’s chance to prove herself, not only to Fiora, but to all the workers of all the Towers, Leonie had accepted the challenge.

Leonie had no idea what Fiora had in mind. She had gone from having too little to do, to far too much, all in the space of a single day.

She took a regular watch in the relays now, like any other adult; and she had gone from the same daily lessons to twice the teaching in the use of her abilities of any of her fellow students.

More
than twice the teaching; she had
special
lessons, and now she knew for herself just what the Keeper of Dalereuth had meant when she had scolded Leonie that day in the garden. Leonie had endured more pain in the past few days than she had ever had to face in her life. Fiora had taken her in hand and had ruthlessly taught her to monitor properly within the space of a day; from there, she had gone on to the

specialized training only a Keeper received. Leonie’s hands were already laced with some of the tiny scars Fiora’s bore; legacy of learning, in the most striking way possible, when not to touch, and who. The scars on her soul went deeper, though they were

invisible.

And Leonie was more determined than ever to wear the crimson robes of a

Keeper.

So among other duties, Leonie now routinely monitored while one of the other

leroni
healed. Today she had taken her first patient as a healer. It had been a small thing, a child with a puncture wound gone bad, but she had drained the wound of poison, purged the child’s system of fever, and healed it, as she had been instructed, from the deepest point outward. The
leronis
who was her teacher and monitor had praised her deft and sure touch, and had told her that before very long, she could expect not only to be assigned patients to heal without supervision, but to take her place in true surgery.

“We do not often risk it,” the woman had said, “but sometimes it must be done,

for there are cases where there is no other cure. There is a man in the village who has a bit of a bandit’s blade lodged within him that gives him pain and must come out one day; when you are ready, he shall be your first patient.”

Leonie had glowed with the praise, though she had been quite ready to take a rest when she was done with the child, and she could not imagine how it would be to

perform surgery…unless, the more a
leronis
practiced, the easier things became.

(Nothing, Fiora said when she asked, is ever
easy,
but it is always possible.) But Leonie’s day was not over; when she had finished with the child, there was

another lesson to be dealt with, this one in the still-room. Fiora had decreed three days ago that she should learn everything to do with healing, whether or not it involved
laran.
“A Keeper must know these things,” she had said, “or how else can she train others?”

That had made sense to Leonie, who had bowed to her will, and had begun

learning the making of herbal medicines and potions. She soon found, somewhat to her own surprise, that this work interested her greatly, for she had an active curiosity and a retentive memory. Her teacher here praised her as being both quick and accurate. Today, this teacher had also said that one day she might be entrusted with surgery, a task usually limited to the most skillful and observant of the technicians.

By the time she had finished her lesson in herbcraft, it was time to take her place in the relays. And when that at last was over, she had no thought at all for anything other than food and sleep. She was never even truly hungry, but Fiora came and pressed food upon her, saying that matrix work dulled the appetite, and she should eat even though she did not care to.

She had quickly discovered that Fiora had been right; devouring every crumb of

the sticky fruit and nut bar Fiora had brought her, and going down to the kitchen for a full meal. But the end of that meal found her even wearier, nearly falling into her plate, trying to keep her eyes open. Someone, she did not remember who, helped her to her feet and to her room. Somehow she had undressed on her own—her new robes making

it easy, and had fallen into bed, and immediately into deep and dreamless sleep.

So when, some time well past midnight, she woke out of fatigue-sodden sleep and

felt the familiar and insistent tug of her twin’s thoughts, her initial response was to try and ignore him. But the contact grew ever more insistent, and finally she gave in. She turned over on her back, suppressed a sigh of exasperation, and opened her mind to him.

She knew it was Lorill; she knew his “voice” as well as her own.

Around her the Tower was quiet, full of the silence of sleeping minds, minds with nothing to disturb them. Not even the
leronis
minding the relays ruffled the peace about her.

Lorill?
Leonie responded grumpily.
Where are you? What do you want at
this
time of night? I was asleep.

I am at Aldaran, where else would I be? Didn’t you send me there?
Lorill seemed to be both amused and disturbed by something.

That only made her temper sour a little farther. What could be so important that it meant he had to call on her in the middle of the night?

Now her sleep had been disturbed and her temper ruffled by a source she would