Six Moon Dance (2 page)

“Girls always talk that way,” he said. “They have no masculine modesty. You must behave demurely and simply ignore it, pretend not to hear it. When they pinch you or rub up against you, get away from them as soon as possible. And take no notice! That’s the proper way to behave, and it’s time you learned it.” Though how you could feel those intrusive hands on you and take no notice, the teacher did not say.

The night after Papa had told him about House Genevois, Mouche heard a tap at his door, so soft and so late he almost thought he had dreamed it until Papa slipped in and sat on the edge of his cot.

“My boy,” he said, “a man’s life is never easy. We are the weaker sex, as everyone knows, though sometimes at the end of a long, hard day loading hay I think our weakness is more a matter of fable than reality. Still, this is the world we live in, and we must live, as the Hags say, either with it or against it. I’ve come to say some things to you that I didn’t want to say with your mama there.” He stroked Mouche’s hair away from his forehead, looking at him sadly.

“Yes, Papa.”

“This decision is much against my inclination, Mouche. You were to be the son of g’Darbos, our unique line. I had such plans for you, for us….” His voice trailed off sadly, and he stared out the small window at two of the littler moons just rising above the horizon to join a third, bigger one in the sky. “But seemingly it is not to be. There will be no g’Darbos lineage, no immortality of the family, no descendants to remember me and honor the name. Even so, I would not make this decision lightly; I had to find out what kind of life we’d be sending you to. I didn’t tell your Mama, but when I was last in Sendoph, I went into House Genevois, by the back door, and when I explained myself, I was allowed to talk to some of the … young men.”

Mouche wriggled uncomfortably.

“I found out, for example, that they eat very well indeed. Far better than we do. I found out that the maximum contract for a Hu—a Consort is about twenty years, beginning as soon as schooling is completed, somewhere between the eighteenth and twenty-fourth year. The standard contract for men from House Genevois provides one third the original payment set aside for your retirement, plus one third of the downpayment on your contract, plus half the payments to House Genevois every year of service, all invested at interest to provide you an annuity. All Consorts receive wages from their patronesses, plus tips, many of them, and even after they’re retired, ex-Consorts can freelance for additional profit. There are ex-Consorts in the city who are almost as well respected as Family Men.”

“But it isn’t the sea,” said Mouche, feeling tears, blinking rapidly to keep them from running over. “If I go to sea and make my fortune, I could send you money.”

“No, Mouche. It isn’t the sea, but it’s now, when we have need, not years from now when it’s too late. If you can set aside your dream of the sea, being a Consort has few drawbacks. Well, there’s the possibility of being killed or scarred in a duel, but any farmer might be killed or scarred. The men I spoke with said Consort dueling can be avoided by a fast tongue and a ready wit, neither of which can help farmers avoid accidents. And, so far as I can tell, the shame that attaches to the candidate’s family goes away after a time. One grows used to saying, ‘My son? Oh, he’s gone to work for a contractor in the city.’ “ Papa sighed, having put the best face on it he could.

“How much will you get for me, Papa?”

“I won’t get it. Your Mama will. It’s twenty gold vobati, my boy, after deducting your annuity share, but Mama has agreed to use it on the farm. That’s the only way I’d give permission for her to sell you, you being my eldest.” Eldest sons, as everyone knew, were exempt from sale unless the father agreed, though younger ones, being supernumerary, could be sold by their mothers—if she could find a buyer—as soon as they turned seven. Su-pernumes were miners and haulers and sailors; they were the ones who worked as farmhands or wood cutters or ran away to become Wilderneers.

Still, twenty vobati was a large sum of money. More than he could make as a seaman in a long, long time. “Is it as much a daughter would bring in?” Mouche whispered.

“Not if she were a healthy, good-looking and intelligent girl, but it isn’t bad. It’s enough to guarantee Mama and Papa food for their age.”

Mouche took a deep breath and tried to be brave. He would have had to be brave to be a seaman, so let him be brave anyhow. “I would rather be a Consort than a playmate, Papa.”

“I thought you might,” said Papa with a weepy smile.

Papa had a tender heart. He was always shedding a tear for this thing or that thing. Every time the earth shook and the great fire mounts of the scarp belched into the sky, Papa worried about the people in the way of it. Not Mama, who just snorted that people who built in the path of pyroclastic flow must eat ashes and like it, and with all the old lava about, one could not mistake where that was likely to be.

Papa went on, “Tell you true, Mouche—but if you tell your Mama, I’ll say you lie—many a time when the work is hard and the sun is hot, and I’m covered with bites from jiggers and fleas, and my back hurts from loading hay … well, I’ve thought what it would be like, being a Hunk. Warm baths, boy. And veils light enough to really see through. It would be fun to see the city rather than mere shadows of it. And there’s wine. We had wine at our wedding, your mama and me. They tell me one gets to like it.” He sighed again, lost in his own foundered dream, then came to himself with a start.

“Well, words enough! If you are agreeable, we will go to Sendoph tomorrow, for the interview.”

Considering the choices, Mouche agreed. It was Papa who took him. Mama could not lower herself to go into House Genevois as a seller rather than a buyer. That would be shameful indeed.

 Sendoph was as Sendoph always was, noisy and smelly and full of invisible people everywhere one looked. Though the city had sewers, they were always clogging up, particularly in the dry season when the streams were low, and the irregular cobbles magnified the sound of every hoof and every wooden or iron-rimmed wheel to make clattering canyons between the tall houses and under the overhanging balconies. The drivers were all supernumes who had to work at whatever was available, and they could not see clearly through their veils. The vendors were equally handicapped. Veils, as the men often said, were the very devil. They could not go without, however, or they’d be thought loose or promiscuous or, worse, disrespectful of women. There were always many Haggers standing about, servants of the Hags, who were servants of the Hagions, the Goddesses, and they were swift to punish bad behavior.

The town was split in two by ancient lava tubes, now eroded into troughs, that guided the northward flow of the River Giles. Genevois House stood on the street nearest west and parallel to the river, its proud western facade decked with tall shuttered windows and bronze double doors graven with images of dueling men. The south side, along Bridge Street all the way to Brewer’s Bridge, was less imposing, merely a line of grilled windows interrupted in the middle by one stout provisioner’s gate opening into the service courtyard. The east side, on the bank of the river itself, showed only a blank wall bracketed at each end by a stubby tower of ornamental brickwork around fretted windows set with colored glass. This wall was pierced by an ancient gate through which a rotting tongue of wharf was thrust into the river, a tongue all slimed with filth and ribboned with long festoons of algae. Parts of House Genevois plus the courtyard walls, the wharf, and the bronze doors, dated back to the lost settlement, the colony from Thor that had vanished, along with its ship, long before the second settlers arrived.

The door where Mouche and his papa were admitted was an inconspicuous entrance off Bridge Street, near the front corner. Inside was the parlor of the welcome suite, where Madame Genevois kept them waiting a good hour. Through the closed door Mouche and Papa could hear her voice, now from here, then from there, admonishing, encouraging. When she came into the interview room at last, her sleeves were turned up to her elbows and her forehead was beaded with perspiration. She rolled the sleeves down and buttoned them, took a linen handkerchief from the cache-box on her worktable, and patted her forehead dry.

“Well, Family Man; well, Mouche,” she said. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but we have a new fencing master who is inclined to be too rigorous with the beginners and too lax with the advanced class. It is easier to bully novices than it is to test competent swordsmen, but I have told him I will not tolerate it. He is paid to exert himself, and exert himself he shall.” She patted her forehead once again, saying in a matter-of-fact voice: “Take off your clothes, boy, and let me look at you.”

Papa had warned Mouche about this, but he still turned red from embarrassment. He took everything off but his crotcher and his sandals, which seemed to make him bare enough for her purposes when she came poking at him, like a farmer judging a pig.

“Your hands and feet are in terrible condition,” she said. “Your hair is marvelous in color and fairly good in shape. Your eyes and face are good. The leg and back muscles are all wrong, of course. Farm work does not create a balanced body.”

“As Madame says,” Papa murmured, while Mouche shifted from foot to foot and tried to figure out what to do with his hands.

Madame jerked her head, a quick nod. “Well, all in all, I will stick to my bargain. The hands and feet will be soaked and scrubbed and brought into good appearance. The muscles will yield to proper exercise. A score ten vobati, I said, did I not? A score for the wife, ten in keeping for the boy.”

“As Madame recalls,” Papa murmured again.

“And is his mother prepared to leave him now?”

Papa looked up then, his eyes filling. He had not planned on this, and Mouche pitied him even more than he pitied himself.

“Can I not have time to say good-bye, Madame?” he begged.

“If your mother allows, of course, boy. Take two days. Be here first thing in the morning on fifthday. First thing, now.”

She unbuttoned her wrists and rolled up her sleeves once more, giving him a look that was almost kindly as he struggled into his clothes.

“You’re coming into good hands, Mouche. We honor our annuities, which some Houses only claim to provide. We don’t sell to sadists. And you won’t hate the life. You’ll miss Mama and Papa, yes, but you’ll get on.” She turned away, then back, to add, “No pets, boy. You know that.”

“Yes, Madame.” He gulped a little. He no longer had a pet, though the thought of Duster could still make him cry.

She asked, almost as an afterthought, “Can you read, Mouche?”

“Yes, Madame.” The village school wasn’t much, but he had gone every evening after chores, for five long years. That was when he was expected to be the heir, of course. Heirs went to school, though supernumes often didn’t. Mouche could read and print a good hand and do his numbers well enough not to mistake four vibela for a vobati.

“Good. That will shorten your training by a good deal.”

Then she was gone from them, and they too were gone from her, and soon they were alone and Papa had dropped his veil and the dust of the road was puffing up between their toes as they walked the long way south, on the west side of River Giles, to the tributary stream that tumbled down from the western terraces through their own farm. All the long valley of the Giles was farmland. On the east, where the grain and pasture farmers held the land, ancient lava tubes lay side by side, lined up north and south like straws in a broom, their tops worn away, their sides rasped into mere welts by the windblown soil, each tube eastward a bit higher than the last, making a shallow flight that climbed all the way to the Ratback Range at the foot of the scarp. On the west, where the g’Darbos farm was, the terraces stepped steeply up to the mountains, and the fields were small and flinty, good for olives and grapes.

“Why are girls worth so much, Papa?” asked Mouche, who had always known they were but had never wondered over the whys of it until now.

“Because they are more capable than men,” said Papa.

“Why are they?”

“It’s their hormones. They have hormones that change, day to day, so that for some parts of every month they are emotional and for some parts they are coldly logical, and for some parts they are intuitive, and they may bring all these various sensitivities to meet any problem. We poor fellows, Mouche, we have hormones that are pretty much the same all the time. We push along steadily enough, often in a fine frenzy, but we haven’t the flexibility of women.”

“But why is that, Papa?”

“It’s our genetics, boy. All a Family Man has to do is one act, taking only a few moments if the mama is willing and a little longer if she is not.” Papa flushed. “So our hormones are what might be called simple-minded. They equip us to do
that thing
, and that’s all. Used to be men attached a lot of importance to
that thing
, though it’s something every mouse can do just as well. Women, though, they have to bear, and birth, and suckle, and—except among the monied folk—they also have to work alongside the Family Man in the business, tending and rearing. They have to work and plan, morn till night. So, their hormones are more complex, as they have to be.”

“And men get in more trouble, too.” Mouche was quoting his teacher.

“Well, yes, sometimes, in some men, our fine frenzy begets a lustful or murderous violence, and we tend to become contentious over little or nothing. But, as the Hags teach, ‘If you would have breathing space, stay out of one another’s face,’ which is one reason we wear veils, not to threaten one another, so we may stay out of trouble and under control.”

“I thought it was so the women couldn’t see us.”

“The
reason
they mustn’t see us, Mouche, is that we must not tempt females, or stir their insatiable lusts, for that leads to disorder and mis-mothering. We are the weaker sex, my boy. It is why we must bid high for wives to take us, to show we have learned discipline and self-control.”

“Darn ol’ hormones,” sulked Mouche. “Girls get all the luck.”