Thendara House (51 page)

“No,” he said, “Never. But I’ll try. Shall we have that drink now?” He was trying to accept her lightness but she liked him a little better now that she knew it was not entirely casual with him.

It was not casual with me either. I liked him and he is a friend, even if it meant no more than that. Is it wrong to wish to give pleasure to a friend, even if he is a man
? She sat beside him, drinking, knowing that he needed somehow to stay close to her through this strangeness. She wished she could make him understand that it was strange to her too.

To give myself only in my own time and season
… the words of the Oath rang in her head.
But I don’t know what that means anymore. Was I using him for my own needs… not sexual needs, but the need of demonstrating to myself that I could still attract a man? Is that what the Oath means, to use men for our needs instead of letting them use us for theirs? Don’t we both have needs
?

“It’s hard,” he said, fumbling, “to get involved or not to get involved. I - I don’t want to get married. And yet I just can’t get that interested in, in the kind of women I might find in the red-light district. I played around a little because - because - this isn’t going to make sense - in a way they were Darkover to me. The only part of it I could have. The real world is a billion light-years away from those girls, and I know it, yet I can -
could
have them, at least in a limited sense, and I couldn’t have the rest. Do you understand what I’m saying? And, oh, hell, it suddenly occurred to me, this woman knows, I can level with her… you know, I really
didn’t
invite you up here to seduce you, it never crossed my mind - “

“Never mind, Monty. Things happen. As you said, we’re both grown up.” She sipped from his glass and patted his hand. How absurd that she should be the one to reassure him!

“Perhaps you can show me where to find a sword? I’d like to try that thing you told me about,” he said, and she nodded.

“Of course. Although, really, Peter would know more about it. He really knows weapons, and I’m no judge, though I’ve been taught a little, a very little really, about using them. Peter really
is
an expert.”

“All right, I’ll ask him, though I really don’t know him that well. Actually I know his wife a little better; we work together a lot. Jaelle. You know her, don’t you, she’s your friend?”

“My oath-mother in the Guild. It’s a very special relationship,” Magda said, and wondered why the thought filled her with such pain. What had come between them, that they were no longer close friends as they once had been? She did not want to think about that.

“She’s a nice little thing,” Monty said, “and she seems so isolated here, out of her depth. Oh, competent - very competent. But she looks so sad. She must really be crazy in love with that man, to have left her world for him. A woman who would do that for a man - oh, hell,” he broke off, as the door-chime made its discreet announcing burp, “I’ll see who that is and try to get rid of them, shall I?”

“Not on my account, Monty, I really have to go and get my boots,” she said, as he went to the door.

“Oh, come in, Li. You know Lorne from Intelligence?”

“Cholayna’s filled me full of stories about her,” Alessandro Li said, bending over her hand. Magda picked up her knife and began to belt it on, fancying that Alessandro Li’s eyes followed her. She flushed, knowing it was foolish. He could not possibly know what had happened between them and probably would not care if he did. She said, “Ask Peter about it, Monty. He can get you a good one, and I understand buying swords is a specialized business - you have to know what you are doing, and on a metal-poor planet like this, they are not cheap! But it’s a lifetime investment.”

“Thinking of taking up swordplay, Monty?”

“No, but I’ll never be able to pass in the field until I learn to handle them, or at least to look as if I knew how,” Monty said.

“Not the kind of thing that would attract me,” Li said offhand. “I really do know your work. Miss Lorne, it’s a pleasaure to meet you. Jaelle gave me the Darkovan name of
Aleki
, by the way.”

She nodded. “Living here, it’s a good idea to have one, to learn to answer to it and think of it as
your
name, an automatic reflex.”

“That’s what’s wrong with Father,” Monty said suddenly, “he can’t think of himself as having anything to do with this world. After - how long? Eleven, thirteen, years, he still feels like an alien.”

“Well, after all,” Aleiki said, “he
is
alien. It’s not healthy - useful for our work, maybe, but not healthy - to get to thinking of one’s self as belonging to an alien world. I don’t think it’s ever right to lose sight of the fact that it’s a pretense, a mask… to let the mask become real. Granted, when we appoint a Legate here, he should be a man who feels real concern for the natives, and can identify with them. But he should be a career Empire man first and foremost. Take Haldane, for instance. He’s smart, he knows this planet backward and forward, and he’s got a mind like the proverbial steel trap. When he’s a bit older - of course I don’t have to tell either of you that it’s going to depend in part on my report whether they set up a Legate in here or not, and when. Haldane’s sharp and ambitious - couple of bad spots in his record, but he’s young yet, and he’s learning. What about it. Miss Lorne? Do you think Peter Haldane would make a good Legate, or are you the right one to ask? You were married to him once, weren’t you?”

“I don’t know if I am the right person to ask or not,” she said, “I like him, but I’m not blind to his faults, if that’s what you mean. Of course he’d do better as Coordinator than Russ Montray. Who wouldn’t?” But she glanced apologetically at Monty. “Anyone would.
I
would.”

“You could have a shot at Coordinator if it were most worlds, but not on Darkover,” Aleki said. “It’s just one of those things; this society won’t accept a woman in the job. If you want a Coordinator’s job somewhere else, Lorne, I can put you up for it. Not here, though. But you were telling me what you thought about Haldane - “

“I’m not sure the mistakes he’s made are reversible,” she said slowly, almost with apology, “or whether they mean a flaw in his imagination. But he’s committed to Darkover and wants to stay here.”

“I don’t know,” Aleki demurred, “in a key position like this, you want a man who’s unquestionably loyal to Empire, who puts Empire first and the particular planet second - “

Magda shook her head. “If it was up to me,” she said, “I’d want a man who thought of the planet first - just to counterbalance all those bureaucrats who are going to put the Empire first; a Legate ought to be a spokesman for the planet itself.”

“That’s a job for their Senators and other key men in Empire government,” Aleki said, “though it’s true that they do sometimes think of a Legate as a man to speak up for the world in question. Different theories of how to appoint people, that’s all. That’s why, even if the Darkovans would accept a woman in the job, you wouldn’t make it higher than Coordinator; your service record shows you have a tendency to go native - think from a planetary, not an Empire point of view, and a Legate can’t be provincial, planet-minded. Haldane, at least, seems to be working hard to develop a larger point of view.” He accepted the drink Monty poured for him. “Oh, thanks.”

“No more for me,” Magda said, “A Renunciate can’t go around the streets drunk, not even at Festival! More coffee, though; that’s wonderful.”

Monty indicated the pile of spindles on the table beside the couch. He said, “Miss Lorne came in on her day off and added to our files on the Renunciates.”

“And now I am off to spend the rest of the day with the women from the Guild House - “

“Don’t go yet,” Aleki said, ” I’ve been wanting to have a talk with you ever since Jaelle mentioned you. I looked up everything about you in Records. While I was out on the fire lines, I saw some women from Neskaya Guild House - “

“We were there from Thendara, too,” Magda said, “but I didn’t see you.”

“You wouldn’t have noticed me if you did,” Alessandro Li said, good-naturedly. “I was supposed to be deaf and dumb, and a servant.”

Monty chuckled. “That’s just what Magda told me I had better be, walking through the streets this morning!”

“You were in the Kilghard Hills,” Aleki said. “Do you know anything about - ” he hesitated over the word, “the Comyn?”

“All I know is in my report from Ardais,” Magda said, conscious that she was evading him, and he scowled. “Not enough. Somehow I think the Comyn, whoever or whatever they are, are the key to this whole crazy planet. You know how it is; normally they come to us, begging to join with the Empire - eager for technology, all the benefits of a star-spanning Empire, but these people think their own little frozen ball of mud is the center of the whole damn universe!”

“You can’t blame them for that,” Magda said. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Not a question of blame. But Darkover is an anomaly and I’d like to know why. I can’t ask Jaelle much about the Comyn - I gather she’s related to some of them. We don’t have any men in the field - we heard a rumor around the Trade City, a few years ago, of some kind of power struggle in the Comyn. Had to do with something they call the Towers, some kind of rebellion led by a man called Lord Damon Ridenow - and when I went out fighting fire, there he was bossing the whole job.”

“Well, you ought to know what’s going on out there, then,” said Magda, “You’ve got one of the best men in the field I ever met. I’d never have spotted him, but we were trapped together behind the fire, and I heard him swearing in Terran.” And then she was struck with doubt; had she heard him or had she picked it up with that special extra sense she seemed to be developing?

“Best man in the field? What the devil are you talking about?” Aleki demanded, “We don’t have
any
men on Alton lands. The only field Intelligence man we have that’s really good is Kadarin, and he and Cargill are out in the Dry Towns. Who are you talking about?”

“They call him
Dom
Ann’dra,” Magda began, and broke off at the sudden fierce look of triumph on Aleki’s face.

“I knew it. I knew it, damn it, for all their talk about contracts and this man being in the legitimate employ of Lord Damon! He’s managed to get himself so well in there because he has no known ties with Intelligence - and there’s some talk that the Darkovan nobility use psi powers, so we couldn’t ever plant an undercover Intelligence man on them! They’d read him, read his mind, but this one, somehow they managed to do a
real
undercover operation; crash his plane out there, have him listed as dead, and now you say this Ann’dra - hell, I
saw
the man, running all over as Lord Damon’s special sidekick, and I never spotted him myself as Intelligence!”

“I don’t think it’s like that at all,” Magda said, remembering the man she had met in the stables that morning. This man was one of them, no longer torn between two conflicting worlds; he had found a home. “The Empire has him listed as dead. Maybe he wants it that way.”

But Aleki was not listening. “I’ve got to find out what he knows. Just now, when we’re making really crucial decisions about Darkover, he could be the key to the whole thing.”

Conflicting Oaths
. As much as the Renunciate Oath meant to her, she was in a sense sworn here too. She was Terran, though she did not want to be, and the thought terrified her. She rose decisively.

“I really have to go, Monty.” As he rose to escort her, she shook her head. “No, no, I was finding my way around this place when you were still studying for the Service entrance exams!”

She could see that hurt him. Was he so conscious of himself as novice and of her as expert?
He doesn’t deserve anything but good from me. I used him and I despise myself for it, and now I’m trying to make him feel small. What a bitch I am
! She let him put his arm round her.

“Are you going to the Festival Ball in Comyn Castle?”

“A Renunciate? My
dear
!” She had to laugh. “The people in the castle don’t know we exist; they’d invite you people first!”

“Well, that is exactly what they have done,” Monty began, and Aleki said, “As it happens I will be there myself; I came here to tell Monty, and that was one reason I was pleased to find you here, Miss Lorne.” He handed Monty a sheet of elegant parchment.