Glory Season

26

Loss of consciousness was not the result of her injuries, or even the gassy, pungent odor of anesthesia. What made her let go this time was a morale sapped beyond exhaustion. Distant sensations told her that the world went on. There were noises—anxious shouts and booming echoes of gunfire. When these ceased, they were followed by loud cries of both triumph and despair. Sounds intruded, swarming over her, prying at windows and doors, but none succeeded in making her take notice.

Footsteps clattered. Hands touched her body, lifting objects away so that a hurt of ministration replaced that of crushing injury. Maia remained indifferent. Voices rustled around her, tense and argumentative. She could tell, without caring, that more than two factions engaged in fierce debate, each too weak or uncertain to impose its will, none of them trusting enough to let others act alone.

There was no tenor of vindictiveness in the manner she was lifted and carried away from the bright, ozone-drenched chamber within a hollow mountain-fang. Rocked on a stretcher, moaning at each jostling shock to her stretched-thin system, she knew in abstract that her bearers meant her well. They were being gentle. That ought to signify something.

She only wished they would go away and let her die.

Death did not come. Instead, she was handled, prodded, drugged, cut, and sewn. In time, it was the simplest of sensations that brought back a partial will to live.

Flapjacks.

A redolence of fresh pancakes filled her nostrils. Injury and anomie weren’t enough to hold back the flood that faint aroma unleashed within her mouth. Maia opened her eyes.

The room was white. An ivory-colored ceiling met finely carved white moldings, which joined to walls the color of pale snow. Through a muzzy languor left over from chemical soporifics, Maia had difficulty fixing clearly on the plain, smooth surfaces. Without conscious choice, her mind begin toying with one blank expanse—imagining a laying thereon of grainy, abstract, rhythmic patterns. Maia groaned and closed her eyes.

She could not shut her nose. Alluring smells pursued her. So did growls from her stomach. And the sound of speech.

“Well now, ready to join the livin’ at last?”

Maia turned her head to the left, and cracked an eyelid. A petite, dark-haired figure swam into focus, wearing a wry grin. “Now didn’t I say to stop gettin’ conked, varling? At least this time you weren’t drowned.”

After several tries, Maia found her voice. “Should’ve… known… you’d make it.”

Naroin nodded. “Mm. That’s me. Born survivor. You, too, lass. Though you love provin’ it the hard way.”

An involuntary sigh escaped Maia. The bosun-policewoman’s presence wrested feelings that hurt, despite her body’s drugged immobility. “I guess you… got through to your boss.”

Naroin shook her head. “When we got picked up, I decided to take some initiative. Called in favors, swung deals. Too bad we couldn’t arrive sooner, though.”

Maia’s thoughts refused to center clearly. “Yeah. Too bad.”

Naroin poured a glass of water and helped Maia lift her head to drink. “In case you’re wonderin’, the docs say you’ll be all right. Had to cut an’ mend a bit. You’ve got an agone leech tapped into your skull, so don’t thrash or bump it, now that you’re awake.”

“… leech…?” With leaden inertia, Maia’s arm obeyed her wish to rise and bend. Fingers traced a boxy object above her forehead, smaller than her thumb. “I wouldn’t touch it if I was—” Naroin started to advise, as Maia gave the box a spastic tap. For an instant, all that seemed muddy and washed out snapped into clarity and color. Along with vividness came a slamming force of pain. Maia’s hand recoiled, hurling back to the coverlet.

“Did I warn ya? Hmp. Never seen a first-timer who didn’t try that, once. Guess I must’ve, about your age.”

The dulling murkiness returned, this time welcome, spreading from Maia’s scalp across her body like a liquid balm. She had seen injured women with leeches before, though most hid them in their hair. I must be hurt much worse than I feel, she realized, no longer’ resenting the numbness. That fleeting break in function had briefly revealed another blocked sensation, more fearsome than physical pain. For an instant, she had been overwhelmed by waves of all-consuming grief.

“Makes ya feel like a zombie, eh?” Naroin commented. “They’ll crank it down as you improve. Should already be gettin’ back some of your senses.”

Maia inhaled deeply. “I … can smell …”

Naroin grinned. “Ah, breakfast. Got an appetite?”

It felt odd. Her insistent stomach seemed unaware of the blunt nausea pervading the rest of her body. “Yes. I—”

“That’s a good sign. They serve quite a table on the Gentilleschi. Hang on, I’ll see to it.”

The policewoman stood up and started to go, her movements too quick and blurry for Maia to follow clearly. Maia tracked them in a series of receding glimpses as her eyes flickered shut for longer and longer intervals. She fought to hold the lids apart as Naroin stopped, turned back, and spoke once more, her voice fading in and out.

“Oh… almost forgot. There’s a note from… young boyfriend an’ sister over… table by your bed. Thought … ike t’know they made it all right.”

The words carried meaning. Maia felt sure of it as they crested over her, soaked in through her ears and pores, and found resonance within. Somewhere, a crushing burden of worry lapsed into gladness. That much emotion was too exhausting, however. Sleep swarmed in to claim her, so that Naroin’s final words barely registered.

“Not a lot of others did, I’m afraid.”

Maia’s eyes stayed closed and the world remained dark for a long, quiet, unmeasured time.

She next awoke to find a middle-aged woman leaning over her, gently touching the top of her head. There were faint clicking sounds, and Maia’s vision seemed to clear a bit. Swells of rising sensation caused her to tense. “That’s not too bad, is it?” the woman asked. From her manner she must be a physician.

“I … guess not.”

“Good. We’ll leave it there awhile. Now let’s look over our handiwork.”

The doctor briskly pulled back Maia’s gown, revealing an expanse of purpled skin that they both regarded with dispassionate interest. Livid stitches showed where repairs had been made, including a semicircle near her left knee. The doctor clucked earnestly, making soothing, patronizing, and ultimately uninformative noises, then departed.

When the door slid open, Maia glimpsed a tall woman of soldierly bearing standing watch in the uniform of some mainland militia. Beyond lay the jet, fluted panels of solar collectors. Maia heard the soft rush of water along a laminar-smooth hull. The vessel’s rock-steady passage spoke partly of the weather, which was brilliantly fair, and also of technology. This was a craft normally devoted to transporting personages.

But the personage it was sent for did the unexpected. He made his own transportation arrangements, and nearly got away.

That wound was still too raw, too gaping to bear. What hurt most about the image seared in her mind was how beautiful the explosion had been. A wondrous convulsion of sparks and dazzling spirals, which scattered glowing shards across a sky so chaste and blue. It had no right being so beautiful! The memory triggered a welling of tears, which brimmed her lower eyelids, spilling salty, silent streamlets down her cheeks..

Her last waking episode felt no more real than an unraveling dream. Had she really met Naroin? She recalled the ex-bosun saying something about a letter. Turning to look at the side table, Maia saw a neatly folded piece of heavy paper, sealed with wax. By heavy, conscious effort, she reached over to take it in one clumsy hand, slumping back amid receding waves of pain. Lifting the letter, she recognized her own name scrawled across the front.

From Brod and Leie, Maia recalled. She was able to feel gladness, now … a colorless, abstract variety. Gladness that two people still lived whom she loved. It helped ease the sense of desolation and forfeiture lodged in her heart, ready to emerge as soon as the doctor turned down the agone leech some more.

Her vision was still too blurry for reading, so she lay quietly, stroking the paper until a knock came at the door. It slid open, and Naroin leaned into the room. “Ah, back with us. You missed breakfast. Ready to try again?”

She was gone again without waiting for Maia’s answer. So, I didn’t imagine it, Maia thought, starting to wonder about the implications. Why was Naroin here? Where was here? And why was Naroin helping look after her? The policewoman surely had more important things to do than play nursemaid to one unimportant summerling.

Unless it has to do with all the laws I’ve broken … the places I’ve been that I wasn’t supposed to… Things I’ve seen that the Council doesn’t want widely known.

Another knock on the door. This time a young woman entered, bearing a covered tray. Maia wiped her eyes, then opened them wide, staring in surprise.

“Where do you want this, ma’am?” the girl asked. Her voice was softer, a little higher, but otherwise almost identical to the last one Maia had heard. The face was a younger version of the last one Maia had seen. Realization came in a rush.

“Clones…” Maia murmured. “A police clan?”

The youngster wasn’t even Maia’s age. A winterling fiver, then. Yet there was something in her smile. A hint of Naroin’s relaxed self-confidence. She put the tray on the side of the bed, and occupied herself propping pillows, helping Maia to sit up.

“Detectives actually. Freelance. Our clan stays small on purpose. We specialize in solitary field work. Normally, you never see two of us together, outside the hold, but I was sent out when we got Naroin’s urgent-blip.”

It was hard to credit. The fiver spoke with a crisp, upper-clan accent. She had none of Naroin’s scars. Yet, in her eyes danced the same vigorous zest, the same eagerness for challenge.

“I guess you don’t think me a threat,” Maia suggested, “to break your cover.”

“No, ma’am. I’ve been instructed to be open with you.”

Sure. What harm can I do? Maia trusted Naroin to some extent, enough to pull strings so that Maia’s next cage would be more pleasant than any she had occupied before. That didn’t mean letting her run around Stratos, blabbing what she’d seen.

The fiver placed the table-tray securely over Maia’s lap and lifted the cover. There were no pancakes, but a predictable, medically appropriate bowl of thin porridge. Still, it smelled so heady Maia felt faint. Rivulets of orange juice ran over her fingers as she clutched the tumbler in both shaking hands. The reddish liquid tasted like squeezed, refined heaven.

“I’ll wait outside,” said the young winterling. “Call, if you need anything.”

Maia only grunted. Concentrating to control her trembling grip, she pushed a spoonful of porridge into her mouth. While her body quivered with simple, beast-level pleasures of taste and satiation, a small part of her remained offset, pondering. I wonder what their family name is. I should’ve known. Naroin was always too damn competent to be another unnik var.

Sooner or later, Maia knew she must start cataloging her ream of losses, against her slim resume of assets. Later sounded better. One thing at a time—that was how she planned living from now on. Maia had no intention of giving up, but neither was she ready yet for linear thinking.

Despite her earlier famishment, she couldn’t more than half finish her meal. Feeling suddenly fatigued, Maia let Naroin’s younger version carry off the tray. Not once did she look directly at the neatly folded letter, but she kept in physical contact with it, as a drowning woman might hold onto a plank from a shattered ship.

When she next awoke, it was dark outside. Shreds of a dream were evaporating, like shy ghosts fleeing the pale electric lamp by her bedside. Her body was prickly with goose bumps and beads of sweat. Her thoughts still seemed dispersed, one moment focused and coherent, and the next hurtling somewhere else, like windblown leaves.

That made her recall Old Bennett and his rake, in the courtyard of Lamatia Hold. What would he think of where I’ve been… what I’ve seen? Probably, the coot no longer lived. Which might be best, given what Maia had done—inadvertently delivering into the archreactionary hands of Church and Council the last remnants of that secret hope the old man had kept next to his heart. A dream gone blurry from being passed down generations in secret lodges—as if men could ever know the constancy of clones.

Renna, Bennett, Leie, Brod, the rads, the men of the Manitou… there was room enough for all on the honor roll of those she had let down.

Stop it, Maia told herself numbly. The deck was stacked long ago. Don’t blame yourself for things you couldn’t prevent.

But she might as well tell the winds and tides to stop, as shuck off that sense of fault, which seemed less refutable for being so vague.

Maia saw that she still tightly clutched the letter. Red bits of crumpled wax lay scattered across the coverlet. She tried smoothing the paper with her hands. Lifting it to the light, she peered to make out, amid wrinkles, a fine, flowing hand.

Naroin had said they both lived, but this confirmation was stronger. Maia abruptly sobbed, her vision clouding as emotion flooded back from being dammed away.

Maia blinked. I what? All she had done was make a promise to Thalla, one she never got a chance to keep. Unless the big var had managed to use the scissors, somehow. As a lockpick, perhaps? To slip their chains, then trick the guards? Or perhaps Baltha and Togay had already pulled the sentinels away, when battle seemed imminent with the men.

Maia’s eyes blurred. Although Brod’s simple account was dramatic, she had only limited stamina and her mind felt full to bursting. Not rushing matters, she waited for vision to clear before resuming.

Again, Maia’s heart yawned open. This time however, she was able to smile poignantly. Good old Brod, she thought. It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her.

There was an afterword in another hand—a left-handed scrawl Maia instantly recognized.

Maia reread the last few paragraphs, then folded the letter and slipped it under her pillow. She rolled over, away from the soft light, and fell asleep. This time, her dreams, while painful, seemed less desolate and alone.

When they wheeled her on deck the next day, to get some sun, Maia discovered she wasn’t the only recuperating patient aboard. Half a dozen other bandaged women lay in various stages of repair, under the gaze of a pair of militia guards. Naroin’s young clone—whose name was Hullin—told her that others rested below, too ill to be moved. The injured men were being carried separately, of course, aboard the Sea Lion, which could be glimpsed following a parallel track, so sleek and powerful it almost kept pace with this white-winged racer. Hullin couldn’t give Maia any information about which of the Manitou crew survived the fight at Jellicoe Sanctuary, though she promised to inquire. There had not been many, she knew. The doctors, inexperienced at treating gunshot wounds, had lost several on the operating table.

That news left Maia staring across the blue water, dejected, until a presence wheeled up alongside. “Hello, virgie… S’good to see you.”

The voice was a pale shadow of its former mellow, persuasive croon. The rad leader’s nearly-black skin now seemed bleached, almost pale from illness and anemia.

“That’s not my name,” Maia told Kiel. “The other thing’s none of your business. Never was.”

Kiel nodded, accepting the rebuke. “Hello, then… Maia.”

“Hello.” Pausing, Maia regretted her harsh response. “I’m glad to see you made it.”

“Mm. Same to you. They say survival is Nature’s only form of flattery. I guess that’s true, even for prisoners like us.”

Maia was in no mood for wry philosophy, and made her feelings known through silence. With a heavy sigh, Kiel rolled a few feet away, leaving Maia to watch the world-ocean glide by in peace. There were questions Maia knew she should be asking. Perhaps she would, eventually. But right now, her mind remained stiff, like her body, too inflexible for rapid changes of inertia.

A little before lunch, ennui began to rob even petulance of its attraction. Maia reread the quick-scrawled letter from Brod and Leie a few more times, allowing herself to begin wondering about what lay concealed between the phrases. There were tensions and alliances, both stated and implied. Local cops and priestesses? Acting at odds from their official bosses, in Caria? Had their union with the Pinnipeds extended only to wiping out a band of pirates? Or would it go farther?

What of the special, secretive defense clans who had also arrived at Jellicoe to secure their hidden base?—which was no longer hidden, after all. Then there were Kiel’s radical supporters, on the mainland. And the Perkinites, of course. All had their own agendas. All felt passionately endangered by possible change in the order of life on Stratos.

It might have been a situation fraught with even more violent peril, perhaps risk of open war, had the object of their contention not evaporated in midair before everyone’s eyes. With the centerpiece of struggle removed, the frantic mood of excess may have eased. At least the killing had stopped, for now.

It was much too complicated to focus her mind on, for long. She was glad when an attendant came to wheel her back to her room, where she ate, then took a long nap. Later, when Naroin knocked and entered, Maia felt marginally better, her mind a little farther along the path toward rational thinking.

The former bosun carried a stack of thin, leather-bound volumes. “These were sent over before we sailed, for when you felt better. Gifts from the Pinniped commodore.”

Maia looked at Naroin. The detective’s accent had softened quite a bit. Not that it was posh now, by a long shot. But it had lost much of its rough, nautical edge. The books lay on the side of the bed. Maia stroked the spine of one, drew it closer, and opened the fine linen pages.

Life. She recognized the subject instantly and sighed. Who needs it?

Yet, the paper felt rich to the touch. It even swelled voluptuous. Brief glimpses of the illustrations, featuring countless arrays of tiny squares and dots, seemed to tease a corner of her mind in the same way that a bright, sharp light might tickle the beginnings of a sneeze.

“I always figured that for some men it was, well, addicting in a way, like a drug. Is that how it is with you?” Naroin seemed genuinely, respectfully curious.

Maia pushed the book away. After several seconds she nodded.

“It’s beautiful.” Her throat was too thick to say more.

“Hm. With all the time I’ve spent around sailors, you’d think I’d see it, too.” Naroin shook her head. “Can’t say as I do. I like men. Get along with ’em fine. But I guess some things go beyond like or dislike.”

“I guess.”

There was a moment’s silence, then Naroin moved closer to sit on the edge of the bed.

“That’s why I was on the ol’ Wotan, when you first came aboard, in Port Sanger. My experience as a sea hand gave me cover for my assignment. The collier would make many stops along the coast. Let me look around all the right places for clues.”

“To find a missing alien?”

“Lysos, no!” Naroin laughed. “Oh, he was already kidnapped by then, but my clan wasn’t brought in. Our mothers knew somethin’ fishy had happened, all right. But a field op like me sticks to her assignment … at least till given clear reason to switch tracks.”

“The blue powder, then,” Maia said, remembering Naroin’s interest in events at Lanargh.

“That’s it. We knew a group had started pushin’ the stuff again, along the frontier coast. Happens every two or three generations. We often pick up a few coinsticks helpin’ track it down.”

There it was again, the change in perspective separating vars from clones. What a summerling had seen as urgent must appear less pressing in the patient view of Stratoin hives. “The powder’s been around a long time, then. Let me guess. Each appearance is a bit less disrupting than the last time.”

“Right.” Naroin nodded. “After all, winter sparkings don’t have any genetic effect. It’s only during summers that new variants come about, when a man’s efforts profit him in true offspring. Males who react less to the drug are just a little better at stayin’ calm and passin’ on that trait. Each outbreak gets a smidgen milder, easier to put down.”

“Then why is the powder illegal?”

“You saw for yourself. It causes accidents, violence during quiet time. It gives rich clans unfair advantages over poor ’uns. But there’s more. The powder was invented for a purpose.”

Maia blinked once, twice, then realized. “Sometimes … it may be useful to have men …”

“Hot as fire, even in the dead o’ frost season. You get it.”

“The Enemy. We used this stuff during the Defense.”

“That’s my guess. Lysos respected Momma Nature. If you want to push a trait into the background, fine, but that’s not the same as throwin’ it away. Thriftier to put it on a shelf, where it might come in handy, someday.”

Maia’s thoughts had already plunged ahead. The Council rulers must have flooded Stratos with the stuff, during the battle to fight off the Enemy foeship.

Imagine every male a warrior. Almost overnight, it would have multiplied the colony’s strength, complementing female skill and planning with a wrath like none other in the universe.

Only, what happened after victory?

The good men—those who might have been trustworthy on any Phylum world, even before Lysos—would have voluntarily given up the powder. Or at least kept their heads until it ran out. But men come in all types. It’s not hard to picture a plague like the Kings’ Revolt erupting during the chaos after a war. Especially with tons of Tizbe’s drug floating around.

Was that enough cause to betray the Guardians of Jellicoe?

Maia knew that the Council didn’t do things without reasons.

“I guess your assignment changed, by the time we met again,” she prompted Naroin.

The petite brunette shrugged. “I heard some odd things. Known mercenaries were gettin’ offers, down the coast. Radical agents were reported drifting into parts around Grange Head. Wasn’t hard to figure where I might get a billet close to things going on.”

Maia frowned. “You didn’t suspect Baltha…”

“Her treason, going over to the reavers? No! I knew there was tension, of course. Lookin’ back, maybe I should have surmised…” Naroin stopped, shook her head. “Take it from an experienced hand, child. It’s no good blamin’ yourself for what you couldn’t prevent. Not so long as you tried.”

Maia’s lips pressed together. That was exactly what she had been telling herself. From the look in Naroin’s eyes, it didn’t get much more believable as you got older.

That evening she learned who had lived, and who had died.

Thalla, Captain Poulandres, Baltha, Kau, most of the rads, most of the reavers, nearly all of the Manitou crew, including the young navigator who had helped Maia and her twin find their way through the dazzling complexity of the world-wall. The tally was appalling. Even hard-crusted Naroin, who had seen many formal and informal battles, could scarcely believe the prodigious manufacturing of bodies that had taken place at and near Jellicoe. Is this what war is like? Maia thought. For the first time she felt she understood, not just in abstract, but in her gut, what had driven the Founders to such drastic choices. Nevertheless, she felt determined not to let Perkinite propagandists seize on this episode. If I keep any freedom of action at all, I’m going to make sure it’s known. Poulandres and his men were forced to fight. This was more than a simple case of males going berserk.

What was it, then? There would surely be those who pictured Renna as the culprit, a blight carrier whose mere presence, and threat to bring more of his kind, inflamed the worst in several branches of Stratoin society. To Maia, that seemed cruelly like blaming the victim. Yet, the point could be made.

After dinner, while Hullin wheeled her along the promenade deck, Maia encountered Kiel a second time. On this occasion, she saw the other woman more clearly, not through a curtain of resentment over things that were already ancient history. The rad agent had lost everything, her closest friends, her freedom, the best hope for her cause. Maia was gentler with her former cottage-mate. Commiserating, she reached out to console and forgive. In gratitude, the forceful, indomitable Kiel broke down and wept.

Later, as dusk fell, the western horizon began to glitter. Maia counted five, six … and finally ten slowly turning beacons whose rhythmic flashes cut across the miles of ocean with reassuring constancy. From maps studied in her youth, she recognized the tempos and colors and knew their names—Conway, Ulam, Turing, Gardner… famed lighthouse sanctuaries of the Mediant Coast. And, beyond far Rucker Beacon, a vast dusting of soft, glimmering diamonds covering a harbor and surrounding hills. The night spectacle of great Ursulaborg.

She was taken to a temple. Not the grand, marble-lined monument dominating the city from its northern bluffs, but a modest, one-story retreat that rambled over a fenced hectare of neatly coppiced woods, several kilometers upriver from the heart of the busy metropolis. The semirural ambience was an artifact, Maia could tell, carefully nurtured by the small but prosperous clanholds that shared the neighborhood. Clear streams flowed past gardens and mulch piles, windmills and light industrial workshops. It was a place where generations of children, and their daughters’ daughters, might play, grow up, and tend family business at an unhurried pace, confident of a future in which change would, at most, arrive slowly.

The walled temple grounds were unprepossessing. The chapel bore proper symbols for venerating Stratos Mother and the Founders in the standard way, yet Maia suspected all wasn’t orthodox. Vigilant guards, arrayed in leather, patrolled the palisade. Within, the expected air of cultivated serenity was overlaid by a veneer of static tension.

Except for Naroin and her younger sibling, none of the women looked alike.

After passing the chapel, the lugars bearing Maia’s palanquin approached an unassuming wooden house, detached from the main compound, surrounded by a covered plank veranda. The doctor who had treated Maia aboard the Gentilleschi conferred with two women, one tall and severe-looking, dressed in priestly habits, the other rotund, wearing archdeaconess robes. Naroin, who had walked alongside during the brief journey from the riverside quay, took a quick lope around the house, satisfying herself of its security, while Hullin briskly looked inside. Upon reuniting near the porch, the pair exchanged efficient nods.

With the help of a nurse-nun, Maia stepped down, bearing stoically the profound pain spreading from her knee and side. They assisted her up a short ramp into the house, pausing at the entrance when the tall, elderly priestess bent to meet Maia’s eye.

“You will be at peace here, child. Until you choose to leave, this will be your home.”

The round woman wearing deacon’s robes blew a sigh, as if she did not approve of promises that might prove hard to keep. Despite pain and fatigue, Maia felt she had learned more than they intended. “Thank you,” she said hoarsely, and let the nurses guide her down a veranda of polished wood into a room featuring sliding doors made of paper-thin wood panels, overlooking a garden and a small pond. The mat bed featured sheets that looked whiter than a cloud. Maia never remembered being helped to slip between them. The sounds of plinking water, and wind rustling boughs, lulled her to sleep.

She awoke to find, next to her bed, the slim volumes given her by the Pinnipeds, plus a small box and a folded slip of paper. Maia opened the note.

The detective’s departure came as no surprise. Maia had wondered why Naroin stuck around this long. Surely she had work to do?

Maia opened the box. Inside a tissue wrapping she found a case made of aromatic leather, attached to a soft strap. She opened it and found therein a gleaming instrument of brass and gleaming glass. The sextant was beautiful, perfect, and so well-made she found it impossible to tell how old it was, save by the fact that it possessed no readout window, no obvious way to access the Old Net. Still, it was on sight far more valuable than the one she had left behind, at Jellicoe. Maia unfolded the sighting arms and ran her hands over the apparatus. Still, she hoped Leie would manage to recover the old one. Cranky and half-broken as it was, she felt it was hers.

She pulled the blanket over her head and lay in a ball, wishing her sister were here. Wishing for Brod. Wishing her mind were not full of visions of smoke spirals and glittering sparks, spreading sooty ashes amid stratospheric clouds.

A week passed slowly. The physician dropped by every morning to examine Maia, gradually notching downward the anesthetic effects of the agone leech, and insisting that the patient take gentle walks around the temple grounds. In the afternoons, after lunch and a nap, Maia was carried by lugar-litter for a promenade through the suburban village and up to a city park overlooking the heart of Ursulaborg. Accompanying her went several tough-looking nuns, each flourishing an iron-shod “walking stick” with a dragon-headed grip. Maia wondered why the precautions. Surely nobody was interested in her, now that Renna was gone. Then she noticed her attendants glancing backward, keeping a wary eye on a foursome of identical, formidable-looking women trailing ten meters behind, dressed as civilians but walking with the calm precision of soldiers. It marred the sense of normality that otherwise flowed over her while passing through bustling market streets.

For the first time since she and Leie had explored Lanargh, Maia felt immersed back in ordinary Stratoin life. Trade and traffic and conversation flowed in all directions. Countless unfamiliar faces came in trios, quintets, or even mixed-age octets. No doubt it would have seemed terribly exotic, had two innocent twins from the far northeast come ashore here on their first voyage from home. Now, myriad subtle differences from Port Sanger only seemed trivial and irrelevant. What she noticed were similarities, witnessed with new eyes.

Within a brick-lined workshop, open to the street, a family of artisans could be seen making a delicately specialized assortment of dinner ware. An elderly matriarch supervised ledger books, haggling over a wagonload of clay delivered by three identical teamsters. Meanwhile behind her, middle-aged clonelings labored at firing kilns, and agile youths learned the art of applying their long fingers to spinning wet mud on belt-driven wheels, molding shapeless lumps into the sturdy, fine shapes for which their clan was, no doubt, locally well-known.

Maia had only to shift her mental lens a little to imagine another scene. The walls withdrew, receding in the distance. Simple handmade benches and pottery wheels were replaced by the clean lines of pre-molded machinery, accurately tuned to squeeze clay into computer-drawn templates, which then passed under a glazing spray, then heat lamps, to emerge in great stacks, perfect, untouched by human hands.

The joy of craft. The quiet, serene assumption that each worker in a clan had a place—one that their daughters might also call theirs. All that would be lost.

Then, as her litter bearers threaded the market throng, Maia saw the stall where the potter clan sold their wares. She glimpsed prices… for a single dish, more than a var laborer earned in four days. So much that a modest clan would patch a chipped plate many times before thinking of buying a replacement. Maia knew. Even in wealthy Lamatia Hold, summer kids seldom dined off intact crockery.

Now magnify that by a thousand products and services, any of which might be enhanced, multiplied, made immeasurably cheaper and more widely available with applied technology. How much would be gained?

Moreover, she wondered, What if one of those clone daughters someday wanted to do something different, for a change?

She spied a group of boys running raucous circles around the patient lugars, then onward toward the park. They were the only males she had seen, even now, in midwinter. All others would be nearer the water, though no one barred their way this time of year. Maia found it odd, after so long in the company of men, not to have any around. Nor were vars like her common, either. Except within the temple grounds, they, too, were a tiny minority.

On arrival at the park, Maia gingerly got off the litter and walked a short distance to a walled ledge overlooking Ursulaborg. Here was one of the world’s great cities, which she and Leie had dreamed of visiting, someday. Certainly it far exceeded anything she had seen, yet now it looked parochial. She knew the place would fit into the vest pocket of any metropolis, on almost any Phylum world… save only those others which had also chosen pastoralism over the frantic genius of Homo technologicus.

Renna had earnestly respected the accomplishment of Lysos and the Founders, while clearly believing they were wrong.

What do I believe? Maia wondered. There are tradeoffs. That much, she knew. But are there any solutions?

It was still terribly hard, thinking of Renna. Within a corner of her mind, a persistent little voice kept refusing to let go. The dead have come back before, it insisted, bringing up the miraculous return of Leie. Others had thought Maia herself finished, only to find out reports of her demise were premature.

Hope was a desperate, painful little ember… and in this case absurd. Hundreds had witnessed the Visitor’s vaporization.

Let go. She told herself to be glad simply to have been his friend for a while. Perhaps, someday, there might come a chance to honor him, by shining a light here or there.

All else was fantasy. All else was dust.

As she gradually improved, Maia started getting visitors.

First came a covey of erect, gracile clones with wide-set eyes and narrow noses, dressed in fine fabrics, modestly dyed. The priestess introduced them as mother-elders of Starkland Clan, from nearby Joannaborg, a name that sounded only vaguely familiar until the women sat down opposite Maia, and began speaking of Brod. Instantly, she recognized the family resemblance. His nose, his wide-open, honest eyes.

Her friend had not been exaggerating. The clan of librarians did, indeed, keep caring about its sons, and even, apparently, its summer daughters, after they left home. The elders had learned of Brod’s misadventures, and wanted Maia’s reassurance, firsthand. She was moved by their gentleness, their earnest expressions of concern. Midway through an abbreviated account of her travels with their son, she showed them the letter proving he was all right.

“Poor grammar,” one of them clucked. “And look at that penmanship.”

Another, a little older, chided. “Lizbeth! You heard the young lady speak of what the poor boy’s been through.” She turned to Maia. “Please excuse our sister. She true-birthed our Brod, and is overcompensating. Do go on.”

It was all Maia could manage, not to smile in amusement. A prim, slightly scattershot sweetness seemed a core, heritable trait in this line. She could see where Brod got some of the qualities she admired. When they got up to leave, the women urged Maia to call, if she ever needed anything. Maia thanked them, and replied that she doubted she would be in town for very long.

The night before, she had heard the priestess and the archdeaconess arguing as they passed near her window, no doubt thinking she was asleep.

“You don’t have to wade through the thick of it as I do,” the rotund lay worker said. “While you var idealists sit here in a rustic stronghold, taking moral stands, there’s heaps of pressure coming down. The Teppins and the Frosts—”

“Teppins cause me no unsleep,” the priestess had answered.

“They should. Caria Temple spins at the whim of—”

“Ecclesiastic clans.” The tall one snorted. “Country priests and nuns are another matter. Can the hierarchs call anathema on so many? They risk heretics outnumbering orthodox in half the towns along the coast.”

“Wish I felt as sure. Seems a lot to risk over one poor, battered girl.”

“You know it’s not about her.”

“Not overall. But in our little corner of things, she’ll do as a symbol. Symbols matter. Look at what’s happening with the men…”

Men? Maia had wondered, as the voices receded. What do they mean by that? What’s happening? With what men?

She got a partial answer later, after the matrons of Starkland Hold departed, when an altercation broke out at the temple gates. Maia was by now well enough to hobble onto the porch of her guest cottage and witness a fierce argument taking place near the road. The var dedicants who doubled as watchwomen warily observed a band of clones like those Maia had seen before, following her litter through town. These, in turn, were trying to bar entry to a third group, a deputation of males wearing formal uniforms of one of the seafaring guilds. The men appeared meek, at first sight. Unlike either group of women, they carried no weapons, not even walking sticks. Eyes lowered, hands clasped, they nodded politely to whatever was shouted at them. Meanwhile they edged forward, shuffling ahead by slow, steady increments until the clones found themselves squeezed back, without room to maneuver. It was a comically effective tactic for males, Maia thought, compensating for winter docility with sheer bulk and obstinacy. Soon, they were through the gate, leaving the exasperated clone-soldiers puffing in frustration. The amused temple priestess made the men welcome, gesturing for them to follow Naroin’s younger sister. Shaking her head, Hullin led the small company to Maia’s bungalow.

The leader of the company wore twin crescent emblems of a full commodore on the armlets of a tidy, if somewhat threadbare, uniform. His bearing was erect, although he walked with a limp. Under a shock of dark gray hair, and dense eyebrows, his pupils reminded Maia of the northern seas of home. She shivered, and wondered why.

Inside, the officers seated themselves on mats while nuns arrived with cool drinks. Maia struggled to recall lessons about the courtly art of hosting men during this time of year. It had all seemed terribly abstract, back in summerling school. In the wildest dreams she and Leie had shared in their attic room, none had pictured facing an assembly as lofty as this.

Small talk was the rule, starting with the weather, followed by dry remarks about how lovely the men found her veranda and garden. She confessed ignorance of the exotic plants, so two officers explained the names and origins of several that had been transplanted from far valleys, to preserve threatened species. Meanwhile, her heart raced with tension.

What do they want from me? she wondered, at once excited and appalled.

The commodore asked how Maia liked the sextant she had received as a replacement for the one abandoned on Jellicoe. She thanked him, and the art of navigation proved an absorbing topic for several more minutes. Next, they discussed the Game of Life books—more as fine exemplars of the art of printing and binding than for the information they contained.

Maia tried hard to relax. She had witnessed this sort of conversation countless times, while serving drinks in the Lamatia guesthouse. The prime commandment was patience. Nevertheless, she sighed in relief when the commodore finally got to the point.

“We’ve had reports,” he began with a low rumble, stroking the tendons of one hand with the other. “From members of our guild who participated in the… incidents at Jellicoe Beacon. We Pinnipeds have also shared observations with our brethren of the Flying Tern Guild—”

“Who?” Maia shook her head, confused.

“Those to whom loss of Manitou… Poulandres and his crew… come as blows to the heart.”

Maia winced. She hadn’t known the guild name. At sea, with Renna, it hadn’t seemed important. On meeting the Manitou crew again, deep underground, there hadn’t been time to ask.

“I see. Go on.”

His head briefly bowed. “Among the many guilds and lodges, there is much confusion over what was, what is, and what must be done. We were astonished to learn the true existence of Jellicoe Former. Now, however, we are told its discovery is unimportant. That its significance is solely to archaeologists. Legends mean nothing, it is said. Real men do not seek to build what they cannot shape with their two hands.”

He lifted his own, scarred and callused from many years at sea, as lined as the eyes which had spent a lifetime squinting past sun and wind and spray. They were sad eyes, Maia noticed. Loneliness seemed to color their depths.

“Who’s been telling you this?”

A shrug. “Those whom our mothers taught us to accept as spiritual guides.”

“Oh.” Maia thought she understood. Few boys were born to single vars or microclans. For most, the conservative upbringing Maia shared with Leie and Albert at Lamatia was the norm. It was as important to the Founders’ Plan as any vaunted genetic manipulation of masculine nature, and explained why flamboyant exploits such as the Kings’ Revolt were doomed from the start.

“There is more,” the commodore went on, “Although there will be compensation for our losses, and those of the Terns, we are told that no blood debt was incurred with the ruin of the so-called Wissy-Man. He was part of no guild, nor ship, nor sanctuary. We do not owe him any bond of memory or honor. So it is said.”

He means Renna, Maia realized. Her friend had spoken of the cruel nickname back on the Manitou. While admiring the hearty, self-reliant craftsmanship of the sailors, Renna had implied that it trapped men in a ritualistic obsession, forever limiting the scope of their ambitions.

After Jellicoe was forcibly evacuated, how many generations did it take for the high clans to accomplish this? It can’t have been easy. The legend must have fought back, clung to life, despite suppression at nearly every mother’s knee.

Whether or not she ever learned the whole story, Maia was already certain of some things. There had once been a great conspiracy. One that had come close to succeeding, long ago. One that might have altered life on Stratos, forever.

The Council in those days had not been without reason, when it used the pretext of the Kings’ Revolt to seize Jellicoe Beacon and oust the old “Guardians,” as the Manitou’s physician had called them. Those ancient wardens of science had been up to something more subversive, more threatening to the status quo, than the Kings’ dim-witted putsch. The existence of the orbital launching gun used by Renna made it all clear.

A plot to reclaim outer space. And with it a radically different way of living in the universe.

More remarkably still, the Guardians managed to keep secret the location of their great factory—their “Former.” The Council swiftly confiscated the great engines of defense without ever guessing how close nearby a secret remnant continued working to complete the plan. For generations it must have gone on. Men and women, sneaking in and out of Jellicoe Former, carefully recruiting their own replacements, losing expertise and skill with each passing of the torch until, at long last, the inexorable logic of Stratoin society ground their brave, forlorn cabal to extinction. A thousand or more years later it was but a threadbare fable, no more.

Renna must have found the ship and launcher almost completed. He used the Former, programming it with his own experience and knowledge to make the last needed parts.

It was a staggering accomplishment, to have achieved so much in but a few days. Perhaps he would have made it, if not forced to launch early by the premature discovery of his hiding place.

Guilt was a more potent voice than reason. But now Maia felt something stronger than either—a desire to strike back. It would be futile, of course, especially over the long run. In the short term, however, here was a chance to lay a small blow in revenge.

“I … don’t know the whole story,” she began hesitantly. Maia paused, inhaled deeply, and resumed with more firmness in her voice. “But what you’ve been told is unjust. A lie. I knew the sailor you speak of, who came to our shores as a guest… with open hands… after crossing a sea far greater and lonelier than any man of Stratos has known…”

It was late afternoon when the men finally stood to take their leave. Hullin helped Maia hobble with them to the porch, where the commodore took her hand. His officers stood nearby, their expressions thoughtful and stormy. “I thank you for your time and wisdom, Lady,” the guild-master said, causing Maia to blink. “In leasing one of our ships to wild reavers, we unintentionally did your house harm. Yet you have been generous with us.”

“I …” Maia was speechless at being addressed in this fashion.

The commodore went on. “Should a winter come when your house seeks diligent men, prepared to do their duty with pride and pleasure, any of these”—he gestured at his younger comrades, who nodded earnestly—“will cheerfully come, without thought of summer reward.” He paused. “I, alone, must decline, by the Rule of Lysos.”

While Maia watched in stunned silence, he bowed once more. With a tone of flustered, confounded decorum, he added, “I hope we meet again, Maia. My name is Clevin.”

There was glory frost that night, floating slowly downward from the stratosphere in a haze of soft, threadlike drifts that touched the wooden railings, the flagstones, the lilies in the pond, with glittering, luminous dust. Most of it evaporated on contact, filling the air with a faint, enticing perfume. Maia watched the gossamer tendrils waft past, and felt as if she were rising through a mist of microscopic stars. For a long time after, she would not go to sleep, afraid of what might happen. Lying in bed, her skin tingled with strange sensations and she wondered what would happen if she dreamed. Whose face would come to her? Brod’s? Bennett’s? The men of Pinniped Guild?

Would womanly hormones set off renewed, painful longing for Renna, her first, though chaste, male love?

The shock of meeting her natural father had not ebbed. Her thoughts roiled and she tossed in confusion. When Maia finally did dream, it was a strangely intangible fantasy—of falling, floating, amid the startling, abstract, ever-changing figures of the Jellicoe wonder wall.

Soon after dawn, the doctor arrived and announced in satisfaction that it would be her next-to-last visit. When she removed the agone leech, it was a chance for Maia to look closely at the box that had suppressed full vividness from both her body’s ache and her heart’s grief. It seemed a modest item, mass-produced and plentiful enough to furnish even the humblest medic, anywhere on Stratos. Now Maia also knew it as another product of a lesser Former, one of those automatic factories still operated under close watch by the Reigning Council. Clearly, some manufactured items were too important to be left to pastoral puritanism. If Perkinism prevailed, however, even these merciful boxes might go away.

“You’ll still be needin’ a bit more rest an’ recoop here in Ursulaborg,” Naroin explained later that morning, on returning from her urgent errand. “Then it’s off to Caria for a command performance before as posh a gaggle o’ savants as you’ve ever seen. What, d’you think o’ that?”

Maia unfolded the arms of her replacement sextant and sighted on a grimlip flower. “I think you’re a cop, and I shouldn’t say anything more till I see a legalist.”

“A legalist?” The small woman’s brow knotted. “Why would you be needin’ one?”

Why, indeed? Naroin might be her friend, but a clone was never entirely her own person. Once Maia was brought to Caria, Maia could think of a dozen excuses the powers that ruled Church and Council might use to lock her away. In a real prison, this time. One without secret byways, patrolled by clone guardians tested over centuries, genetically primed for vigilance.

Maia had decided not to let it come to that. This time, she would act first. Before she was taken from Ursulaborg, there should come a chance to slip away. Perhaps during her daily ride. Once away through the city crowds, she would seek shelter in an out-of-the-way place where important people might never trace her. Some quiet, dead-end seaside town. I’ll find a way to get word to Leie, Brod. We’ll open a chandler’s shop. Repair sextants damaged by lazy sailors.

Perhaps Naroin could be persuaded to look the other way at the right moment. Best not to count on it, though.

“Never mind,” she told the short brunette. “Had a nightmare. Can’t shake the feeling I’m still living in it.”

“Who could blame you, after all you’ve been through.” Naroin grinned. When Maia failed to respond, she leaned forward. “You think you’re under arrest or somethin’? Is that it?”

“Could I walk out the front gate, if I so chose?”

The wiry ex-bosun frowned. “Wouldn’t be wise, right now.”

“I thought not.”

“It’s not what you think. There’s folk who don’t hold your health as dear as we do.”

“Sure.” Maia nodded. “I know you’re lots nicer than some would be. Forget I asked.”

Naroin chewed her lower lip unhappily. “You want to know what’s goin’ on. It’s all changing so fast, though… Look, I’m not supposed to say anythin’ till she arrives, but there’s someone comin’ tomorrow to talk to you, and then escort you to the capital. I know it’s fishy sounding, but it’s needful. Can you trust me till then? I promise it’ll all make sense.”

A petulant part of Maia wanted to cling to resentment. But it was hard to stay wary of Naroin. They had been through so much together. I’d rather be dead than so suspicious I can’t trust anybody.

“All right,” she said. “Till tomorrow.”

Naroin left again. Later, Maia and her escorts were about to depart on the afternoon litter ride when Hullin reached up to hand Maia a second folded sheet of heavy paper, sealed with red wax. Maia’s heart lifted when she saw Brod’s handwriting. She waited until the palanquin was jostling through the suburban market square, then tore it open.

Maia smiled. Just wait till they get her next letter! Leie would julp with jealousy that she hadn’t met Clevin first! There were other, more serious matters to discuss, but it would be good to report that one of their childhood fantasies had actually come true.

Lysos, how she missed Brod and Leie! Maia desperately wished they would come soon.

Maia wondered, Why does that make me feel jealous? Now that the secret was out, it only made sense to have scholars investigate the wonders of another age. Perhaps they’d learn a thing or two… even change their minds about some stereotypes.

The litter jerked, breaking Maia’s concentration. The market was unusually crowded today. Peering over the throng, Maia saw a disturbance a few dozen meters ahead. A trio of shoppers were arguing vehemently with a storekeeper. Suddenly, one of them picked up a bolt of cloth and turned to leave, causing the merchant to screech in dismay. Maia picked up the word “Thief!” shouted over the general hubbub. Ripples of agitation spread outward as clone sisters of the sales clerk spilled out of the building behind her. Others converged to aid the shoppers. Shoving and yelling escalated with startling rapidity into unseemly grabbing, and then blows, spreading in Maia’s direction.

The temple wardens moved to interpose themselves while Hullin tugged at the upset lugars, urging them to turn around. They managed to swing off the main thoroughfare into a side alley, the only avenue of escape, ducking awkwardly under a jungle of clotheslines. “Uh,” Maia started to suggest. “Maybe I should get down—”

Hullin gave a startled cry. The fiver’s head vanished under a blanket thrown from a nearby shadowed doorway, drawn tight with cord. The lugars grunted in panic, dropping one pole of the litter, teetering Maia vertigously outward as she grabbed futilely after Brod’s fluttering letter.

Suddenly, she found herself staring straight into the blonde-fringed face of—Tizbe Beller!

Maia had only an instant to gasp before black cloth surrounded her as well, accompanied by the rough clasping of many pairs of hands. A jarring tumult followed as she sucked for breath while being lugged, pell-mell, along some twisty, abruptly shifting path. It was a hurtful, bone-shaking ordeal, surpassed only by her frustrated helplessness to fight back.

At last, the black cover came off. Maia raggedly inhaled, blinking disorientation from the searing return of sunshine. Hands yanked and pushed, but this time Maia lashed out, managing to elbow one of her captors and catch another in the stomach with her right foot, before someone cuffed her on the side of the head, bringing the stars out early. Through it all, Maia caught brief glimpses of where they were taking her, toward a set of stairs leading upward, into the belly of a gleaming, bird-shaped contraption of polished wood and steel.

An aircraft.

“Relax, virgie,” Tizbe Beller told Maia as they trussed her into a padded seat. “Might as well enjoy the view. Not many varlings like you ever get to fly.”

27

After the initial tussle, it proved Maia’s most comfortable abduction, by far. Tied down, with no option for resistance, she made the best of things by gazing through a double-paned window at the vastness of Landing Continent. Soon, even her headache went away.

Luminous yellow and pale green farmlands stretched as far as the eye could see. These were combed by long fingers of darker forest, interlaced to leave migration corridors for native creatures, from the coast all the way to mist-shrouded mountains that began to loom in the north. Small towns and castlelike clanhold manors appeared at periodic intervals, squatting like spiders amid spoked roads and surrounding hamlets. Strings of lakes were punctuated by regularly spaced fish farms that shone glancing sunlight into Maia’s eyes.

Stubby barges with gray sails leisurely plied the rivers and canals, while throngs of quick, flittering mere-dragons flapped in formations of two hundred or more, warily skirting farms and habitations on their way to fallow rooting grounds. Lumbering heptoids wallowed through the fens and shallows, their broad back-fans turned to radiate the heat of the day. And then there were the floaters—zoors and their lesser cousins—bobbing in the breeze, tethered like gay balloons to the treetops where they grazed.

Maia had traveled far in recent months, but now she realized that one can only gain true perspective from above. Stratos was bigger than she had ever imagined. In all directions were signs of humanity in rustic codominion with nature. Renna said humans often turn whole worlds into deserts, through shortsightedness. That’s one trap we avoided. No one could accuse Lysos, or Stratoin clans, of thinking short-term.

But Renna also hinted there are other ways to do it, without giving up so much.

Maia watched the pilot touch switches and check small indicator screens as the plane entered a gentle bank and turned west well short of the mountains. The aircraft interior was a finely wrought mix of handcrafted wood panels and furnishings, accoutered with a compact array of instruments. If she had been in friendly company, Maia might have frothed with questions. Her bound hands were adequate reminder, however. So she kept silent, mildly ignoring Tizbe and yawning when the young Beller tried for the fourth time to initiate conversation. The implication couldn’t be missed. She had escaped Tizbe twice before, bringing ruin to her plans, and thought nothing of doing so again. Maia sensed the attitude upset the Beller clone.

I’m learning, Maia thought. They keep making mistakes and I keep getting stronger.

At this rate, someday I may actually gain control over my life.

The pilot warned her passengers of turbulent air. Soon the plane was bouncing, pitching, and yawing in abrupt jerks. Tizbe and her ruffians blanched, turning discolored shades, which Maia enjoyed watching. She helped worsen the symptoms by staring at the Beller courier like a specimen of unpleasant, lower-order life. Tizbe cursed with flecked lips, and Maia laughed, unsparing in her scorn. Curiously, the tossing didn’t seem to affect her like the others. Even the pilot looked a bit ragged, by the time they finally regained settled air. The storm aboard the Wotan was much worse, Maia recalled.

Then a golden light seized her attention, causing her to squint in wonder at what lay beyond the forward windscreen. A shimmering reflection, coming from a spacious, dimpled territory surrounding and covering a cluster of hills at the intersection of three broad ribbons of river.

Caria, she realized. Maia watched the capital city glide nearer, its skirts yellow with the tiles of countless roofs, its tiara of white stone girdling the famed acropolis plateau. Atop that eminence, twin basilicas swam into view beyond measure. Any schoolgirl knew the pillars on sight, the Universal Library on one side and on the other, the Great Temple dedicated to guiding worldwide reverence of Stratos Mother. All of her life, Maia had heard women speak of pilgrimages to Caria, of venerating in solemn awe the planetary spirit—and her apostles, the Founders—under that vast iridescent cupola on the right, with its giant dragon icon cast in silver and gold. The other palace, built to the same glorious scale, was unadorned and hardly ever mentioned. Yet it became Maia’s focus as the aircraft circled toward a field, south of the city.

Lysos never would have built the Library co-equal to the Temple if she intended a seedy clubhouse for a few smug, savant clans.

She contemplated the grand edifice until descent removed it behind a nearby hill covered with middle-class clansteads. From that point until final landing, Maia concentrated on watching the pilot, if only to keep from helplessly worrying over her fate.

Her kidnappers installed her in a room with floral wallpaper and its own bath, unpretentiously elegant. A narrow balcony stepped down to an enclosed garden. A pair of stolid, servant-guards smiled at Maia, keeping her discreetly in sight at all times. They wore livery with fine piping on the shoulders and a gold-chased letter P, for the name of their employer-clan, she supposed.

Maia had expected to be taken to one of the pleasure houses operated by the Bellers, perhaps the very one where Renna had been abducted. From there, perhaps she would be sold to Tizbe’s Perkinite clients, in revenge for what she’d done in Long Valley, months ago. This didn’t look like a business establishment, however, nor did the hills near the rolling compound seem the kind of precinct where one found bordellos. Colorful silk banners flew from fairy turrets, and crenelated battlements rose above the tall, elderly groves of truly ancient estates. It was a neighborhood of noble clanholds, as far above Tizbe’s hardworking family on the social ladder as the Bellers towered over Maia. Beyond the garden wall on one side, she often heard the strains of a string quartet, along with shouts of playing children, all laughing the same, syncopated trill. In the opposite direction, coming from a tower room whose lights remained on late into the night, there were recurrent sounds of anxious adult argument, the same voice taking on multiple roles.

After the landing, and Maia’s first-ever ride in a motor car, she saw no more of Tizbe, or any other Beller. Nor did she particularly care. By now Maia realized she had become a pawn in power games played at the loftiest heights of Stratoin society. I ought to be flattered, she thought sardonically. That is, if I survive till equinox.

At her request, she was brought books to read. There was a treatise on the Game of Life, written three hundred years ago by an elderly savant who had spent several years with men, both at sea and as a special summertime guest in sanctuary, studying anthropological aspects of their endless tournaments. Maia found the account fascinating, though some of the author’s pat conclusions about ritualistic sublimation seemed farfetched. More difficult to plow through was a detailed logical analysis of the game itself, written a century earlier by another scholar. The math was hard to follow, but it proved more orderly and satisfying than the books provided in Ursulaborg, by the Pinnipeds. Those had emphasized rules of thumb and winning technique over basic theory. It was a mental meal that left her hungry for more.

The books helped pass time while Maia’s knee finished mending. Gradually she resumed a regimen excercise, building her strength while keeping eyes peeled for any chance of escape.

A week passed. Maia read and studied, paced her garden, tested the relentless vigilance of her guards, and worried ceaselessly over what was happening to Leie and Brod. She couldn’t even ask if there were any more letters, since Brod had apparently been forced to smuggle out the last one. The inquiry itself might only give her friend away…

She refused to show frustration, lest her captors gain the slightest satisfaction, but at night the image of Renna’s fatal explosion haunted her sleep. Several times, she awoke to find herself sitting bolt upright, both hands over her racing heart, gasping as if trapped in an airless space, deep underground.

One day the guards announced she had a visitor. “Your gracious host, Odo, of Clan Persim,” the servants proclaimed, then obsequiously bowed aside for a tall elderly woman with a wide face and aristocratic bearing.

“I know who you are,” Maia said. “Renna said you set him up to be kidnapped.”

The patrician sat down on a chair and sighed. “It was a good plan, which you helped snarl, in several ways.”

“Thank you.”

The noblewoman nodded, a genteel gesture. “You’re welcome. Would you like to know why we went to so much risk and trouble?”

A pause. “Talk if you want. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

Odo spread her hands. “There were countless individuals and groups who wanted the Outsider put away. Most for visceral, thoughtless reasons, as if his deletion might turn back the clock, erasing de facto rediscovery of Stratos by the Hominid Phylum.

“Some fantasized his removal might stop the iceships from coming.” Odo shook her head with aristocratic derision. “Those huge liners full of peaceful invaders will arrive long after we now living are dead. Time enough to worry out a solution. Taking revenge on a poor courier would only weaken our position, when and if full contact is restored.”

“So much for the motives of others. Of course, you had more mature reasons for grabbing Renna. Like squeezing information out of him?”

The old woman nodded. “There were elements of inquiry, certainly. Our Perkinite allies were interested in new gene-splicing methods, which might lead to self-cloning without males. Others sought improved defense technology, or to learn iceship weaknesses, so we might destroy them at long range, far from Stratos.”

“Too far for the public to observe, you mean. So most would never know we’re murdering tens of thousands.”

“I was told you catch on quickly for a mouse,” Odo replied. “Nor were those the sole ideas for using your alien friend and his knowledge.”

Maia recalled Kiel’s Radicals, who had hoped to alter Stratoin biology and culture at least as much as the Perkinites, though in opposing directions. Maia knew Renna would have disapproved of being used by either party.

“Let me guess about the Bellers. Their motive was strictly cash, right? But you Persims, you blue-bloods, had reasons all your own.”

Odo nodded. “His presence in Caria was becoming… disruptive. The Council and curia had vital matters to discuss, yet were growing unpredictable whenever he was around. His calm restraint during summer had defied our expectations, winning him allies, and we realized it would only get worse with winter and first frost. Imagine how persuasive a fully functioning, articulate, old-style male might be then, to those with weak wills and minds! That describes many so-called ‘moderates’ who were fast slipping out of our faction’s control. For reasons of political convenience, it was deemed necessary to remove him.”

“What?” Maia stood up. “Why, you smug bitchie. Are you sayin’ that’s why—”

Odo lifted a hand, waiting until Maia reseated herself before resuming in a lower voice. “You’re right. There’s more. You see, we’d made a promise… one we were unable to keep.”

Maia blinked. “What promise?”

“To send him back to his ship, of course. And replenish his supplies when his mission was done. It’s why he came down in a simple lander, in the first place, instead of making other arrangements.” The old woman exhaled heavily. “For months, those believing in him had been working to fix the launching facility, not far from here. The machinery functioned when last used, a few centuries ago. Our records are intact.

“But too many parts have failed. Too much skill is lost. We couldn’t send him home, after all.” Odo hurried on before Maia could interrupt. “To make matters worse, he was in constant contact with his ship. Some already wanted him put away to prevent relaying information useful to future invaders. Those demands grew urgent when he started politely asking to inspect our launch preparations. Soon, he was bound to report that Stratos no longer had access to space.”

“But Renna—”

“One night, in a confiding mood, he told me that peripatetics—interstellar couriers—are considered expendable. With numberless lives already sacrificed in the new crusade sweeping Phylum space, that of recontacting lost hominid worlds, what does another matter? Ironic, isn’t it? His own words finally convinced my clan and others to ally with the Perkinites.”

Yes, that was Renna, all right, Maia thought miserably. Her late friend’s odd mixture of sophistication and naivete had been one of his most charming traits, and most alien.

“I take it the new launcher at Jellicoe has changed a few minds?” she asked.

The aged clone tilted her head. “You’d expect so, wouldn’t you? In fact, it is complex. Political tides are at work. The Great Former and its consort facilities are causing much dispute.”

No kidding. I can tell you’re scared spitless.

“Why are you telling me all this?” Maia asked. “What do you care what a var like me thinks?’”

Odo shrugged. “Normally, not much. As it happens, we have need of your cooperation. Certain things will be required of you—”

Maia laughed. “What in Lysos’s name makes you think I’d do anything for you?”

A reply was ready. From her capacious sleeve, Odo drew forth a small glossy photograph. Maia’s fingers trembled as she took it and regarded Brod and Leie, standing together beside a vast, crystalline, spiral-shaped tube—the muzzle of the great launching gun on Jellicoe Island.

Maia’s sister seemed engrossed, drawing a closeup sketch of one of the machine’s many parts, while Brod ran his finger alongside a chart, covered with figures, leaning over to say something to Leie. Only their hunched shoulders betrayed the tension Maia felt emanating from the picture. Nearby, at least a dozen women conversed or lounged casually for the photographer. Almost a third of them were clones of the matriarch sitting across from Maia now.

“I think you care about the health and safety of your sister and her present vril companion. That persuades me to assume that you will do us a favor, or two.”

The noblewoman seemed impervious to Maia’s stare of unadulterated hatred. “For your first task,” Odo resumed. “I want you to accompany me tonight. We are going to the opera.”

The elegance of it all did not take Maia completely by surprise. She had been to the Capital Theater many times, vicariously, via tele broadcasts and scenes in drama-clips. As a little girl, she had fantasized dressing in the sort of fancy gowns worn by rich clonelings, gliding in to watch magnificent productions while, all around her, the whispered intrigues of great houses went on behind demure smiles and shielding fans.

Fantasies were one thing; it was quite another matter to struggle with unfamiliar fasteners and stays, coping with billowing, impractical acres of drapery that could have no function other than to advertise the wealth and status of the wearer and the wearer’s house. Finally, a pair of young women from Odo’s hive came to help Maia prepare for her first evening of make-believe. They managed to arrange the puffy sleeves and pleated trousers to conceal most of her recent scars, but Maia drew the line at makeup, which she found repulsive. When Odo arrived, the old woman concurred for her own reasons.

“We want the child to be recognized,” she ruled. “A small bruise or two will cause notice. Besides, doesn’t she cut a superb figure, as is?”

Maia turned before a precious, full-length mirror, amazed by what she saw. The outfit emphasized what she had barely noticed till now, that she had a woman’s body. She was four centimeters taller and much fuller than the scrawny, gawky chicken who had shyly stepped out of Port Sanger, months before. Yet it was her own face she found most surprising: from one thin, healing scar under her right ear; to her cheekbones, now entirely free of baby fat; to the sweep of her brown hair, brushed to a fine gloss by one of Odo’s attentive servants. Most astonishing were her eyes. They remained unlined, apparently youthful and innocent, until you took them full on. Slightly narrowed, they seemed at once both skeptical and serene, and from an angle she recognized the brow of her father, master of ships and storms.

It was an image of herself she had never envisioned.

Damn right! Maia thought, nodding. Take things as they come. And let ’em watch out, if they leave me a single opening.

That didn’t seem likely, unfortunately. Leie and Brod relied on her good behavior for their lives. Still, Maia turned away from the mirror with a smile for Odo. You made an error, letting me see that. Let’s find out how many more mistakes you make.

The Great Theater sprawled gaudily a short distance down the acropolis esplanade from the Temple and Library. Horse-drawn carriages, lugar-litters, and more than a few motor-limousines coursed up to the steps, depositing the topmost layer of Caria society for tonight’s revival opening of a classic opera, Wendy and Faustus. High priestesses, councillors, judges, and savants climbed the broad steps. In many cases, the matrons of great clans were accompanied by younger cloneling daughters and nieces, too callow for real power, but the right age for procreation. These youthful ones, in turn, escorted small groups of men, tall and erectly impressive in their formal guild uniforms. The winter cream of Stratoin maledom, here to be wooed and entertained.

Maia watched from the carriage she shared with Odo and a half-dozen older women from various aristocratic clans. It had been a chilly ride. Some of the old trepidation returned under their withering disdain. That enmity was based on a wide range of fanaticisms, but what made these women powerful went far deeper, to the core of the society established by Lysos long ago.

From the moment she stepped down from the carriage, Maia felt eyes turn her way. Whispered comment followed her up the steps, through the ornate portico, and along a sweeping, ceremonial stairway to the box where Odo arranged for her to sit prominently forward, on public display. To Maia’s relief, the house lights soon went down. The conductor raised her baton, and the overture began.

The opera had its points. The musical score was beautiful. Maia hardly paid attention to the libretto, however, which followed a hackneyed theme about the ancient struggle between womanly pragmatism and the spasmodic, dangerous enthusiasms of old-fashioned males. No doubt the drama had been revived at the behest of certain political parties, as part of a propaganda campaign against restored Phylum contact. Her presence was meant to signify approval.

During intermission, Maia’s escorts took her to the sparkling elegance of the lobby, where var waiters circulated with trays of drinks and sweetmeats. Here it would be simple to elude her escorts … if only Leie and Brod weren’t counting on her. Maia choked down her frustration and tried to do as she’d been told. Smiling, she accepted a fizzy beverage from a bowing attendant, a var like her, with eyes lowered deferentially.

Maia’s smile widened in sudden sincerity when she saw, coming toward her, a tight group of figures, two of whom she knew. Shortest, but most intense, strode the detective, Naroin, looking out of place in a simple, dark evening suit. Next to her, and half again as tall, walked Clevin, the frowning, earnest commodore of Pinniped Guild. My father, Maia contemplated. The reality seemed so detached from her dreams of childhood, it was hard to sort true emotions, except to relish the proud light when his gray eyes saw her.

Two women accompanied Naroin and Clevin, one of them tall, silver-haired, and elegant. The other was darkly beautiful, with mysterious green eyes. Maia did not know their faces.

Odo slid alongside Maia as the group approached, “Iolanthe, how good to see you back in society. It seemed so dull without you.”

The tall woman nodded her simply-coiffed gray head. Her face was delicately boned, with an air of quiet intelligence. “Nitocris Hold has been mourning its friend, who came so far across the galaxy, only to meet betrayal and untimely death.”

“A death drenched in irony, and by his own hand,” Odo pointed out. “With rescue just meters away, if only he knew it.”

Maia would have gladly, unrepentantly, killed Odo on the spot. She remained rigidly still, save to give one quick nod to Naroin, another to her father.

“So you feel delivered of your crime?” the woman named lolanthe asked, her voice prim, like that of a savant. “We’ll find other witnesses, other testimony. Such a grand cabal of tensely diverse interests cannot hold. You play dangerous games, Odo.”

Odo shrugged. “I may be sacrificed at some point. In Macro Chess, a side may lose many queens, yet still win the game. Such is life.”

It was Clevin who spoke next, to the surprise of both disputing women. “Bad metaphor,” he remarked in a terse, gravelly baritone. “Your game isn’t life.”

Odo stared at the man, as if unable to credit his effrontery. Finally, she broke into derisive laughter. Behind Maia, others of the conspiracy joined in. The Pinniped commodore didn’t blanch. In his stern silence, Maia felt greater weight of argument than all their ridicule. She knew what he meant, and said so with her eyes.

Naroin stepped toward Maia. “Missed ya, varling. Sorry, I didn’t figure on a snatch like that. Underestimated your importance once again.”

That was the part Maia still couldn’t figure out. What’s so important about me?

“You all right?” Naroin finished. “All right,” Maia answered, almost a whisper. “How about yourself?”

“Fine. Catchin’ hell for lettin’ you get taken. How was I to know you’d get t’be a livin’ legend?”

Around them on every side, people were watching. Maia sensed attention not only from stately matrons, but quite a few male onlookers, as well.

Iolanthe spoke again. “It won’t do, Odo. She cannot remain your prisoner.” The savant turned to Maia. “Come with us now, child. They cannot prevent it. We’ll protect you as our own, with powers you cannot imagine.”

Maia somehow doubted that. She had, of late, seen forces beyond anything this pale intellectual could have known. Moreover, like the sword of Lysos breaking symbolic chains on the Lanargh City statuary clock, events had shattered all fetters on Maia’s imagination.

On another level, she felt the offer was doubtless sincere. Though Iolanthe’s side in the political conflict was probably doomed, she could almost certainly shield Maia’s person. All Maia had to do was start walking.

There are many kinds of prisons, she thought acidly.

“That’s kind of you,” she replied. “Some other time, perhaps.”

The elderly savant winced at the rejection, but Naroin looked unsurprised. “I see. You like it in Persim Hold? They’re your friends now?”

Maia first thought Naroin was expressing bitterness. Then she read something in the ex-bosun’s eyes. A feral, conspiratorial gleam. Her sarcasm had another objective.

Maia nodded. She took a deep breath. “Oh—yes. Odo—is—my—friend… as—much—as—she—was—Renna’s.”

It was the general message she had been ordered to convey, delivered so woodenly, no one with sensitivity would believe a word. Maia heard Odo hiss sharply restrained anger.

Leie, Brod, have I just murdered you? On the other hand, maybe Naroin would now add two and two, and realize how Maia was being coerced. Perhaps there were still honest layers in government, who could be called on to rescue two innocent fivers from captivity. To get that message across was worth stretching the Persim’s patience. Once.

Clevin growled. Maia watched his gnarled hands clench and unclench. In the dead of winter, she felt a kind of blazing heat from the man. His trouble wasn’t remembering how to make a fist, but controlling his wrath. Naroin took his elbow, applying urgent pressure to his arm.

“This won’t stop the strike,” he rumbled.

Strike? Maia wondered.

Odo laughed. “Your so-called strike is a mere irritant, already unraveling. In days, perhaps weeks, it will be over. All women will unite to reject the participants. They’ll get no more summer passes. No more sons. Isn’t that right, Maia?”

Maia made no further efforts to send messages, only to obey. “Yes,” she assented, completely ignorant of what she was agreeing to. Naroin and Clevin understood her predicament. All that mattered were her sister and her friend.

“Our past differences evaporated with the unfortunate Visitor,” continued Odo. “Now Maia wants to join the cause of restoring peace and order to the Founders’ Plan.”

For the first time, the fourth member of Naroin’s party spoke up. The dark-haired woman was of medium height and poised bearing, with a distinctive oval face and intense eyes. “In that case, you won’t mind if I pay a call on you, at Persim Hold?” she said to Maia.

Before Maia could answer, Odo demanded, “Which are you? Which Upsala?”

It was a decidedly strange query to Maia’s ears, as if a clone’s individuality ever mattered.

“I am Brill, of the Upsala.” The graceful brunette inclined her head. “I perform tests for the Civil Service.”

Maia sensed Odo’s tense reaction, as if she had encountered something more worrisome than any gambit by Naroin, or Clevin, or even the aristocratic Iolanthe. “I’d be honored, Brill, of Upsala,” Maia blurted impulsively, feeling sticky from anxious perspiration under her heavy gown. “Come at your convenience.”

The atrium lights dimmed to the sound of a gentle chime, signaling intermission’s end. Odo pointedly took her hand, giving it a brief, painful squeeze. “Time we took our seats,” she said to Iolanthe and the others. “Enjoy the show. Come, Maia.”

There was chill silence during the long, exposed climb back to the theater box. As they resumed their seats and the lights went down, Maia felt Odo lean near. “If you try another stunt like that, my dear young scattered seed, you’ll live to regret it. More than your own life rides on doing a better job of acting.”

Maia had even less taste for watching the second act.

The music sounded like clashing engines; the colorful costumes seemed foppish, ridiculous. Only one thing caught her eye, to distract momentarily from her misery. While listlessly scanning the sea of extravagance below, her lethargic gaze picked out a pair of faces, each of them identical to the woman, Brill, she had just met in the lobby.

The first belonged to the conductor of the orchestra. The second was the tenor, her chin covered with an artificial beard, leaping and crooning with ersatz masculine abandon, playing the archetype operatic role of Nature’s conceited challenger, the epitome of hubris, Faust.

Another week passed. Each morning, Odo arranged for Maia to be dressed in a stunning new outfit before taking her for an open carriage ride down the esplanade. It showed her off to strollers and pedestrians without risking further close personal contact.

At first, Maia was captivated by the sights of Caria—Council Hall, the University, the Great Temple—almost as much as any tourist. The fascination didn’t last, however. Each time she returned to her room in Persim Hold, Maia quickly stripped off the grotesque finery and threw herself into an orgy of exercise, to vent her frustration. The guards were gone now, yet she felt more securely imprisoned than ever in Long Valley, or on Grimké Isle.

On Fridinsday, during the morning ride, Maia witnessed a scene of commotion taking place before one of the majestic, many-pillared public buildings. Uniformed soldiers and proctors strove to keep back several groups of demonstrators. One, consisting of men in varicolored guild tunics, appeared listless, demoralized. Maia could only partly read one of their drooping banners. JELL… RMER said the portion visible between folds.

Suddenly, Maia’s heart sped. Just ahead, standing at the curb where the carriage was about to pass, she saw Clevin, her father, talking earnestly with Iolanthe. Odo spoke to the driver, who flicked her reins. The horses sped to a canter as Clevin looked up, met Maia’s eyes, and started to raise a hand.

The moment passed too quickly. Odo let out a short, satisfied grunt as Maia sank back into the plush upholstery.

The men need help, she thought, miserably. If I were free, maybe I could buck up their spirits. If only…

She shook her head. Nothing was worth spending her sister’s life or Brod’s. Certainly not in a cause that was lost from the start. No effort on her part would change destiny. They rode back to Persim Hold without another word. Maia tossed off her stiff clothes, exercised, ate, and crawled into bed.

The next day, on her breakfast tray next to the orange juice, Maia found a newspaper. A simple, four-page tabloid, printed on fine, slick paper. From the price and circulation, both written on the masthead, it was clearly meant only for subscribers at the pinnacle of Caria’s many-tiered social strata. Several portions had been razored out. The lead article was riveting, nonetheless.

So, Maia thought. It was her first partial accounting of events since her capture. Also her first clue to her status as a pawn in big-time struggles.

The reavers were crushed. Kiel’s rads are broken. Loose alliances of liberals, like those backcountry temple vars, might lean toward change, but they lack cohesiveness. The high clans have long experience coping with such grumblings.

But there’s another group giving them a scare. The sailing guilds.

In Ursulaborg, the Pinnipeds had spoken of propaganda. The Great Former means nothing, they had been told. The Wissy-Man was not your kind…

Maia didn’t overrate her own contribution. The sailors might have rejected the official line anyway. But her narrative must have helped when she told what she had learned about the ancient Guardians—about a forlorn struggle by ancient men and women to devise another way. A way of including more than one round patch of earth and sea and sky, in the Stratoin tale. A way to amend, without rejecting, what the Founders had once willed their heirs.

And she had spoken of Renna, the brave sailor whose sea was the galaxy. The man who flew, as no man of this world had since the banishment. When they departed on that day, she had felt certain the seamen knew her friend from the stars. That he was one of them. That he was owed a debt of honor.

The Persim brought me here to help undermine the strike. That’s why they flaunt me around town. The men at the opera must have reported back to their guilds. If I was in Odo’s company, how serious could I ever have been, about being the starman’s comrade?

Reading between the lines, it grew apparent why the high clans were concerned. The sailor’s job action was hurting.

That caused Maia to smile, proud that Clevin and the others hadn’t missed a trick.

It went on, describing how the guilds would predictably fall away from each other, accepting generous deals and compromises, unable to maintain righteous ire in a season when the blood ran cool. Maia sighed, finding the scenario believable, even predictable. The dead hand of Lysos always won.

No wonder they let me see this. She allowed for the fact that the reporting was biased and incomplete. Nevertheless, the newspaper left her depressed.

Odo arrived as Maia finished dressing. She expected the Persim matriarch to gloat over the article, but apparently Odo had other matters on her mind. Clearly agitated, the old woman dismissed the maids and bid Maia sit down. “There will be no excursion today,” she said. “You have a visitor.”

Maia lifted an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“Shortly, you will meet Brill Upsala in the east conservatory. You’ll be supplied pencils, paper, other equipment. Brill has been informed that you are willing to be examined, under the terms of ancient law, but that you do not wish to discuss matters having to do with the alien.”

Odo met Maia’s eyes. “We will be listening. Should you make liars of us, or imply distress of any sort, you might as well accompany the Upsala when she goes… and live forever with guilt of your sister’s fate. Let it be on your head.”

Maia knew she had stretched Odo’s patience once, almost to the limit. Odo and her cohorts were busy pulling a thousand threads, political, social, and economic. Open and furtive. If they felt Maia and Leie and Brod were more trouble than useful as pawns in their game, she could expect ruthlessness. Maia nodded agreement, and followed Odo out the door.

By now, she knew the Persim household well. There were Yuquinn maids and Venn cooks and Buju handywomen, all of whom seemed nimble and content in their inherited niches, needing no command or incentive to anticipate every Persim whim. Why not? Each was descended from a var woman who had served peerlessly, and been rewarded with a type of immortality. An immortality that could end any time the Persims withdrew patronage. No violence would be required. No one need even be fired. The Persims had only to stop sponsoring expensive winter matings for their clients, then wait the brief interval of a generation or two.

Was the relationship predatory? Unfair? Maia doubted the Yuquinn or Venn would think so. If they were prone to such thoughts, their lines would have ended with the natural passing of their first var ancestress. Of late, though, Maia had come to adopt Renna’s attitude. All of this was well-designed, as natural as could be, and from another point of view, appalling.

I am no longer a daughter of Lysos, she realized. I’ll never adjust to a world whose basic premise I can’t bear.

“In there,” Odo said, pointing through a set of double doors. “Behave.”

The threat, implicit, sufficed. Odo turned and walked away. Maia entered the conservatory, where the striking, dark-haired woman she had met at the opera was laying papers on a fabulously expensive table made of metal frames supporting nearly flawless panes of glass. While one of Odo’s younger clone-sisters observed from the corner, Brill indicated a chair. “Thank you for seeing me. Shall we begin?”

Maia sat down. “Begin what?”

“Your examination, of course. We’ll start with a simple survey of preferences. Take these forms. Each question features five activities—”

“Um, pardon me … what kind of examination?”

Brill straightened, regarding her enigmatically. Maia experienced a fey sensation of depth. As if the woman already saw clear through her, and had no real need for exams.

“An occupational-aptitude test. I’ve accessed your school records from Port Sanger, which show adequate preparatory work. Is there a problem?”

Maia almost laughed out loud. Then she wondered. Is this a pose? Might she have been sent hereby Iolanthe Nitocris and her allies?

But then, Odo would have checked Brill’s bona fides. The small civil service of Stratos was supposedly outside politics, and its testers could go anywhere. If this was a pose, Brill made it believable. Maia decided to play along.

“Uh, no problem.” She looked left and right. “Where are your calipers? Will you be measuring bumps on my head?”

The Upsala clone smiled. “Phrenology has its adherents. For starters, however, why don’t we begin with this?”

There followed a relentless confrontation with paper. Rapidfire questions, covering her interests, tastes, knowledge of grammar, knowledge of science and weather, knowledge of …

After two hours, Maia was allowed a short break. She went to the toilet, ate a small snack from a silver tray, walked in the garden to stretch her back. Ever businesslike, the Upsala clone spent the time processing results. If she had been sent to convey a message from Naroin or Clevin, she was good at concealing the fact.

“I saw two of your sisters after we spoke at the opera, Maia commented, aware of the watching Persim clone. “One of them played Faust…”

“Yes, yes. Cousin Gloria. And Surah, at the baton. Bloody showoffs.”

Maia blinked in surprise. “I thought they were very good at what they did.”

“Of course they were good!” Brill glanced sharp! “The issue is what one chooses to be good at. The arts are fine, for hobbies. I play six instruments, myself. But they pose no great challenge to a mature mind.”

Maia stared. It was passing strange to hear a clone disparage her own kin. Stranger was the implication of her words.

“Did you say choose? Then your clan doesn’t—”

“Specialize?” Brill finished the word with a disdainful buzz. “No, Maia. We do not specialize. Shall we resume work now?”

The return to neutral professionalism cut short Maia’s line of inquiry. Brill next presented a wooden box, and asked Maia to grip two levers while peering down a leather-lined tube. Within, a horizontal line rocked back and forth, reminding her of an instrument she had seen in the aircraft carrying her from Ursulaborg. “This is an artificial horizon,” Brill began. “Your task, as I add difficulty, will be to correct deviations …”

An hour later, Maia’s finery was damp with perspiration, her neck hurt from concentration, and she moaned when Brill called time for a halt.

“O-oh-h,” she commented in surprise. “That… was fun.”

The Upsala clone answered with a brief, thin smile: “I can tell.”

After more physical tests, there came another break, for supper in the nearest of Persim Hold’s many dining rooms. To Odo’s clear irritation, Brill seemed blithely to assume she was invited to table, obliging the Persim matriarch to attend as well, keeping an eye on things.

She needn’t have bothered. The conversation was less than enthralling across an expanse of fine-grained Yarri-wood, embroidered linen, and fine porcelain, lit by sparkling chandeliers. For most of the time, Brill shuffled papers, except when meticulously thanking the servants for any dish that was served. Maia enjoyed the effect on Odo.

Nearly, the matron thought the test-taker’s visit a chess move by her faction’s opponents, and was writhing to figure it out. Also clearly, it frustrated Odo to spend so much time worrying over a mere pawn.

Was that all it was? A gambit to waste the enemy’s time? If so, Maia was pleased to help. The exams were exhausting, but a pleasant diversion. She only wished Brill seemed more sensitive to her own efforts hinting at messages to be relayed to Naroin and her father.

“The Upsalas are a funny lot,” Odo commented while the main course was cleared away, and she finished her third glass of wine. “Do you know of them, summer child?”

Maia shook her head.

“Then let me enlighten you. They are a successful clan by normal standards, numbering about a hundred—”

“Eighty-eight adults,” Brill corrected, regarding Odo with relaxed, green eyes.

“And my sources say their fortune is secure. Not first rank, but secure. There are two Upsalas on the Reigning Council, and forty-nine with savant chairs at various institutions. Nineteen at Caria University itself, in diverse departments. And yet, do you know what’s most peculiar about them?” A servant refilled Odo’s glass as she leaned forward. “They have no clanhold! No house, grounds, servants. Nothing!”

Maia frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“They all live on their own! In houses or apartments they purchase as individuals. Each makes her own living. Each makes her own sparking arrangements with individual men! And do you know why?” Odo giggled. “They hate each other’s guts.”

When Maia turned to regard Brill, the examiner shrugged. “The typical Stratoin success story demands not only talent, upbringing, and luck to find a niche. Gregarity is another customary requisite…self-sacrifice for the good of the hive. Sisterly solidarity helps a clan to thrive.

“But humans aren’t ants,” she went on. “Not everyone is born predisposed to get along with others identical to herself.”

Nerves and alcohol had transformed the normally-aloof Odo, who laughed harshly. “Well put! Many’s the time a bright young var gets something going, only to see it spoilt by her own pretty, bickering daughters. Only those at peace with themselves can truly use the Founders’ Gift.”

Maia recalled countless times she and Leie had been less than selfless with each other while growing up. They had attributed it to the rough passage of a summer background, but was that it? Might the tense affection between them worsen with prosperity, rather than growing into perfect teamwork? Maia sensed an evolutionary imperative at work. Over generations, selection would favor the trait of getting along with different versions of yourself. If so, perhaps the twins’ plans had always been moot, as likely as frost in summer.

“There are exceptions,” Maia prompted hopefully. “Your clan manages, somehow.”

Brill sighed, as if bored with the topic. “Eventually, we Upsala learned how to maintain the needful functions of a clan, without all the trappings or constraints.”

“She means they have grand meetings, about once an old Earth year. Half of ’em don’t attend, they send their lawyers!” Odo seemed to find it hilarious. “They don’t even like their own clone daughters. That’s why their numbers grow so slow—”

“It’s not true!” Brill snapped, showing the first strong emotion Maia had seen. The woman paused to regain her composure. “Everything’s fine until adolescence, then…” She lapsed a second time, and finished in a low voice. “I get along fine with my other kids.”

“Your vars, you mean. That’s another thing. Upsala prefer summer breeding! Makes ’em popular with the lys, it does,” Odo slurred as she sloshed more wine.

“Your way would never work in the countryside,” Maia told Brill, fascinated.

“True, Maia. City life offers public services, a wealth of career choices. …”

“Tell her about career choices! Don’t you all pick different professions ’cause you hate to even run into each other?”

While Odo chuckled, Maia stared. Apparently, the Upsala excelled at anything they tried, starting from scratch with each cloned lifetime. Maia wondered if Renna, her late friend, ever encountered this marvel during his stay in Caria. If not handicapped by one defective trait, the Upsala might own all of Stratos someday. No wonder this one’s presence had Odo nervous, despite Brill’s innocuous chosen profession.

In their case, genius overcame a crippling lack of harmony. Leie and I aren’t geniuses, but we don’t exactly hate each other, either. Maybe something in between is possible. If we both get out of this mess alive, perhaps we can learn from the Upsalas.

Brill took out a pocketwatch and cleared her throat. “That was awfully pleasant, yes? Now might we get back to work? I’d like to finish soon. My babysitter charges extra after ten.”

The next series dealt with Maia’s “cryptomathematical talent,” or her unforeseen affinity for games like Life. For an hour, Maia waged midget battles on a computerized board like Renna’s, trying—usually in vain—to prevent the gadget from wreaking havoc on her patterns. Brill kept demanding that Maia use new “recursion rules,” meaning ways to make things progressively, then impossibly harder. It was a tense, sweaty exercise of guesswork and raw skill. Maia loved it … until the patterns started blurring and her endurance ran out.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she moaned at the end.

“It is suspected that you may qualify for a niche,” Brill answered dryly, turning off the machine. Maia rubbed her eyes. “What niche?”

Brill paused. “I can tell you what not to expect. Do not hope for entry to the university based on your talent with patterns and symbol systems. If it carries across generations, a winter child of yours might apply on its basis, but for you it is already too late to be a mathematician.”

Thanks, Maia thought, with bitterness that surprised her. Who asked, anyway?

“Moreover, you appear to have too high an action potential for the contemplative life,” Brill went on, scanning a chart. “That isn’t a drawback to my client, although other factors—”

Maia sat up quickly. “Client? You mean this isn’t for the civil service?” She sensed the Persim clone edge forward, suddenly alert. Brill shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “I’ve been commissioned by a member of my own family, to seek workers for a new venture. Frankly, it’s a long shot, not a safe niche, by any means.”

“But…” Maia sensed anger in the tense silence of the Persim cloneling. “Odo assumed this was for—”

“I’m not responsible for Odo’s assumptions. Any potential employer may contract with the examination service. This isn’t relevant to Persim Clan’s present political struggles, so Odo has no cause for concern. Now, shall we get back to work? Our last item will be—”

“I’m a good navigator!” Maia blurted. “And I’m pretty good with machines. My twin’s better. We’re mirror twins, you know. So maybe… between us…” Maia’s voice trailed off, weighed down by embarrassment over her outburst. Some lurking, childish remnant had leaped out, pleading a case she no longer even cared to make.

“Those factors may be relevant,” Brill commented after a beat. There was a brief light of kindness in the examiner’s eyes. “Now, the last item is an essay question. I want you to describe three episodes in which you solved puzzle locks to enter hidden chambers. You know the events I speak of. Succinctly note what factors, logical and intuitive, led you to surmise correct answers. Limit each answer to a hundred words. Pick up your pencil. Begin.”

Maia sighed and started writing. Apparently, everyone knew of her adventures under Jellicoe Isle. By now, the place was back in the hands of those same conservative forces that had, for centuries, maintained the Defense Center. But the secret was out for good.

… so our success at the red-metal door was partly luck… she wrote. I once overheard some words which made me realize the symbols in the hexagons could mean…

Maia knew she was doing poorly, failing to organize her thoughts in coherent order. Pondering Jellicoe also reminded Maia of problems more real than these stupid tests. If only Leie and Brod had noticed the gradual transition of power there, and snuck out with Naroin’s friends while it was still possible! Now, apparently, it was too late.

Maia finished describing the crimson door she and Brod had found in the sea cave, and moved on to summarize her logic in the sanctuary auditorium. She started by giving full credit to Leie and the ill-fated navigator, for their parts in solving the riddle that led to discovering the Great Former. Except that also meant sharing blame for what followed—the violent invasion of those cryptic precincts, forcing Renna to cut short his preparations and attempt that deadly, premature launch into a terrible blue sky.

It’s my doing. Mine alone. She had to close her eyes and inhale deeply. I can’t think about that right now. Save it. Save it for later.

Maia finished that summary, putting the second piece of paper atop the first. She stared at the third blank sheet, then looked up in bafflement. “What third puzzle lock? I don’t recall—”

“The earliest. When you were four. Breaking into your mothers’ storeroom.”

Maia stared in surprise. “How did you—”

“Never mind that. Please finish. This test measures spontaneous response under pressure, not skill or completeness of recollection.”

Maia suspected the jargon hid something, some meaning hidden in the words, but it escaped her. Sighing, she bent over to write down what she could remember of that long-ago day, when the creaking dumbwaiter carried two young twins for the last time into those catacombs beneath the Lamai kitchens.

In her hand, Maia had clutched a scrawled solution, her final effort to defeat the stubborn lock. With Leie holding a lantern, she pressed stony figures—twining snakes, stars, and other symbols—which clicked into place, one by one. Neither twin breathed as the defiant, iron-bound door at long last slid aside to reveal—

Bones. Row after row of neat stacks of bones. Femurs. Tibia. Fibia. Grinning skulls. Maia had leapt back; and Leie’s surprised cry had rattled the wine racks behind them, her eyes showing white clear around as they tremulously entered the secret chamber, gaping at generation after generation of ancestresses… each of whom had been genetically their own mother. There were a lot of mothers down there. The ossuary had been chill, silently eerie. Maia gratefully saw no whole skeletons. Lamai neatness—sorting and stacking the bones primly by type—made it harder to envision them twitching to vengeful life.

Other things had lain hidden in the chamber. Icy cabinets held dusty records. Then, toward the back, they encountered more menacing items. Weapons. Vicious death machines, outlawed to family militias, but stored in keeping with the motto of Lamatia Clan—“Better Safe Than Sorry.”

Afterward, both twins had had lurid dreams, but soon they replaced qualms with jesting scorn for that great chain of individuals leading back to a mythical, lost set of genetic grandparents. The intermediary—the Lamai person—had conquered time, but apparently would never overcome her deep insecurity. In the end, what Maia recalled best were the months spent tantalized by a puzzle. Once solved, she realized, a riddle that had seemed compelling all too often turns out to be nothing but insipid.

After Brill went home, Maia crawled between the bee-silk sheets, exhausted, but unable to stop thinking. Renna, too, was immortal in a way. Lysos would’ve thought his method silly, as he probably thought hers.

Perhaps they both were right.

Sleep came eventually. She did not dream, but her hands twitched, as if sensing a vague but powerful need to reach for tools.

The next day dawned eerie as Maia watched frost evaporate from flowers in the garden, perfuming the air with scents of roses and loneliness. When Odo collected her for their daily ride, neither woman spoke. Maia kept mulling over Brill Upsala’s parting remarks the night before.

“I can’t say much about the venture,” the examiner had said, referring to the enterprise her clan was funding. “Except that it involves transport and communications, using improved traditional techniques.” Brill’s smile was thin, wry. “Our clan likes anything that lets us spread ourselves out thinner.”

“So it doesn’t have to do with the Former, or the space launcher?”

Brill’s green eyes had flashed. “What gave you that idea? Oh. Because I was with Iolanthe and the Pinniped, that night. No, I only came along to be introduced. As for the Jellicoe finds, those are sealed by Council orders.” Brill lifted her satchel. “You must have known there was no other prospect. A dragon’s inertia is not shifted by yanking its tail.”

Aware of the Persim clone trailing nearby, Maia had asked one final question at the door. “I still can’t figure how you knew about our visit to the Lamatia bone room. The Lamai never found out, did they?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Then you must’ve spoken to Le—”

“Don’t make assumptions,” the older woman had cut in. Then, after a beat, she held out her hand. “Good luck, Maia. I hope we meet again.”

It wasn’t hard to interpret Brill’s meaning. I hope we meet again… if you survive.

Those words came to mind as the carriage bore Maia and Odo by the marble portico of Council House. Fewer demonstrators held banners, which hung limper than ever. There was no sign of Naroin or her father.

The strike is failing, Maia sensed. Even if it were still active on the coast, how could loosely organized men overcome great clans and win back things lost ages before living memory? What did ancient Guardians, or the Great Former, mean to the average seaman, anyway? How long can passion be maintained over an abstract grievance, nearly a thousand years old?

Something unsettling occurred to Maia. Brill’s examination had covered many of the skills needed by the pilot or navigator of a ship. Might it be part of a scheme to recruit strike breakers! There were enough women sailors to staff some freighters, after all. Without officers, those ships would soon founder, but what if women were found as replacements on the quarterdeck, as well?

I’d refuse, Maia vowed. Even if it turned out to be the one thing I was born to do, I could never help deprive men of their one niche, their one place of pride in the world. The Perkinite solution would be more merciful.

She knew she was leaping to conclusions. The situation was making her paranoid and depressed.

Watching the faltering demonstration, she saw Odo smile.

The next day, the heavens opened and there was no ride in the park. Maia tried to read, but the rain turned her thoughts to Renna. Strangely, she found it hard to picture his face. Eventually, he would have gone away, anyway, she told herself. You never would have had anything lasting together.

Was her heart hardening? No, she still mourned her friend, and would always. But she owed duty to the living. To Leie. And she missed Brod terribly.

That night, Maia woke to words in the hallway. She heard passing footsteps, and shadows briefly occulted the line of light under her door.

“… I knew it couldn’t last!”

“It’s not over, yet,” commented a more cautious voice.

“You saw the reports! The vrilly lugs’ll accept the token offer and be happy about it. We’ll be moving cargo well before spring!”

The words and footsteps receded. Maia threw off the covers and hurried to the door in her nightgown, in time to see three figures round a far corner—all Persims, ranging from early to late middle age. After a moment’s temptation to follow, Maia turned and headed the way they had come, her bare feet silent on the hand-woven carpet. No guards were stationed to keep her prisoner anymore. Either they felt sure of their hold over her, or cared less what she did.

Her way lay past the main foyer of this wing and into the next, where a staircase led up to an ancient tower. Voices drew near, descending. Maia ducked into shadows as another pair of Persim entered view.

“… not sure I like sacrificing so many to the courts, dammit.”

“Ten is the least the Reeces say’ll pass. Sometimes you must trust your lawyer clan.”

“I suppose. What a farce, though. Especially when we’ve won!”

“Mm. Hard on those going down. Glad it won’t be me.”

The pair turned past Maia, the second voice continuing with a sigh. “Clan and cause, that’s what matters. Let the law have its …”

When the way was clear, Maia hurried up the stairs the two had just vacated. The first landing was dim, and she felt sure her goal lay higher. From her room, she had watched a light burn many times, accompanied by reverberations of tense argument. Tonight there had been jubilation.

Three levels up, an open set of doors faced the landing. An electric bulb burned under a parchment lampshade, casting shadows across towering bookshelves. An ornate wooden table lay strewn with papers, surrounded by brass-studded leather chairs in unseemly disorder. Presumably, the mess would be cleaned up in the morning. Maia entered hesitantly. It was a more impressive room, by her prejudices, than the ornate opera house. She yearned for the volumes lining the walls, but headed first for the detritus of the adjourned meeting, uncrumpling bits of scrap paper, poking through sheets apparently torn out of ledgers and covered with scribbled accounts… until she found something more easily interpreted. Another newspaper, complete this time.

Maia skimmed ahead.

This explained some of what she had overheard. The good news was that even the winners in the political struggle, Odo’s side, could not completely co-opt the courts. Public servants were enforcing the law, by narrow Stratoin standards.

Yet ironies abounded. The law emphasized deeds by individuals. That might have made sense back in the Phylum, but here, actions were often dictated by groups of clans. As in elections, the law pretended universal rights, while securing the interests of powerful houses. There was another article.

So Brill was right. The men and their allies couldn’t fight inertia, the tendency of all things Stratoin to swing back toward equilibrium. The guilds had won a token concession or two—Maia felt especially glad that Renna would be honored—and Odo’s side in the struggle might have to sacrifice a few members. Nevertheless, Jellicoe was restored to its old wardens, who would now quietly resume their deadly exercises, practicing to blow up great, unmanned ships of snow.

Maia glanced at a photograph accompanying the article.

Commodores and Investors Discuss New Venture, the motion read. Pictured were several sailors dressed in officers’ braid, looking on as three women showed them a model ship. Maia bent to look closer, and stared. “Well I’ll be…”

One of the women in the photo was a younger version of Brill Upsala, eagerness lighting her eyes like fire. The sleek ship was of no design Maia knew, lacking sails or smokestacks. Then she inhaled sharply.

It was, in fact, a zep’lin.

Is that the “auxiliary vessel” they’re talking about? But that would mean—

A voice came out of nowhere.

“So. Always one to show initiative, I see.”

Maia swiveled catlike, arms spread wide. Behind the door, in a dim corner of the room, a solitary figure lay slumped in a plush chair, clutching a cigar. A long ash drooped from the smoldering end.

“Too bad that initiative won’t take you anywhere but the grave.”

“You’re the one that’s going to feed the dragon, Odo,” Maia said with satisfaction. “Your clan’s dumping you to buy off the law.”

The elderly Persim glared, then nodded. “We’re taught to consider ourselves cells in a greater body…” She paused. “I never considered, till now… what if a cell doesn’t want to be sacrificed for the smuggy whole?”

“Big news, Odo. You’re human. Deep down, you’re just like a var. Unique.”

Odo shrugged aside the insult. “Another time, I might have hired you, bright summer child. And left a diary warning our great-granddaughters to betray your heirs. Now I’ll settle for warmer revenge—taking you with me to the dragon.”

Maia fell back a step. “You… don’t need me anymore. Or Leie or Brod.”

“True. In fact, they have already been released to the Nitocris. Their vessel docks in less than a week.”

Maia’s heart leaped at the news. But Odo went on before she could react.

“Normally, I’d let you go as well, and watch with pleasure as your fancy friends all fall away, hedging their promises, leaving you with a tiny apartment and job, and vague tales to tell one winter child—about when you rubbed elbows with the mighty. But I won’t be around for that bliss, so I’ll have another. The Persim owe me a favor!”

Maia whispered. “You hate me. Why?”

“Truth?” Odo answered in a low, harsh voice. “Jealousy of the hearth, varling. For what you had, but I could not.”

Maia stared silently.

“I knew him,” Odo went on. “Virile, summer-rampant in frost season, yet with the self-control of a priestess. I thought vicarious joy would suffice, by setting him up at Beller House, with both Bellers and my younger siblings. Yet my soul stayed empty! The alien wakened in me a sick envy of my own sisters!” Odo leaned forward, her eyes loathing, “He never touched you, yet he was and remains yours. That, my rutty little virgin, is why I’ll have a price from my Lysos-cursed clan, which I served all my wasted life. Your company in hell.”

The words were meant to be chilling. But in trying to terrify, Odo had instead given Maia a gift more precious than she knew.

… he was and remains yours …

Maia’s shoulders squared and her head lifted as she gave Odo a final look of pity that clearly seared. Then she simply turned away.

“Don’t try to leave!” Odo called after her. “The guards have been told. …”

Odo’s voice trailed off as Maia left the muted room and its bitter occupant. She descended the drafty stairway, but instead of turning toward her room, she continued down one more level to the ground floor, and then crossed a wide, dimly lit atrium beneath statues depicting several dozen identical, joyless visages. She pulled the handle of an enormous door, which opened slowly, massively.

Cool garden air washed her face, cleansing foul odors of smoke and wrath. Maia stepped onto a wide gravel drive and looked up at the sky. Winter constellations glittered, save where the luminous dome of the Great Temple cast a bright halo, just over the next rise. City lights sprawled below the acropolis, along both banks of a black ribbon of river crisscrossed by many bridges.

The driveway dropped gently through an open park, then past a grove of ancient, Earth-stock trees, ending at last with a wrought-iron gate set in a high wall. Maia approached without stealth. A liveried sentry stepped out of the guard booth, offering a slight, quizzical bow.

“Can I help you, miss?” the stocky, well-muscled woman asked.

“I’m leaving.”

The guard shook her head. “Dunno, miss. It’s awfully—”

“Do you have orders to stop me?”

“Uh… not since a few days ago. But—”

“Then kindly do not stand between another daughter of Stratos and her rights.”

It was an invocation she recalled from a var-trash novel, which seemed ironically apropos. The keeper shifted uncertainly from foot to foot, and finally shuffled to the gate. As it swung open, Maia thanked the attendant and stepped through, arriving on a strange street, in a strange city, barefoot in the dead of night.

Of course Persim Clan wanted it this way. She was no longer needed, an embarrassment, in fact. But murder was risky. What if it restoked the waning sailors’ strike? What if her disappearance prodded the lazy machinery of the law past some genteel threshold of tolerance? This way, the Persims might even solve their predicament in Odo, who had outlived her usefulness to the clan. Maia’s escape might provoke that broken piece of the hive to end things neatly, skirting a degrading ritual of sentencing and punishment.

I’m still being used, Maia knew. But I’m learning, choosing those uses with open eyes.

And now… what will I choose?

Not to be the founder of some immortal dynasty, that much she knew. A home and children were still fond hopes, as was warmth of the heart and hearth. But not that way. Not by the cool, passionless rhythms of Stratos. If Leie chose that route, good luck to her. Maia’s twin was smart enough to start a clan, with or without her. But Maia’s own goals went beyond all that now.

Earlier, she had declared herself free of duty to the legacy of Lysos. That assertion had nothing to do with returning to ancient sexual patterns, or preferring the bad old terrors of patriarchy. Those were separate issues, in her mind already settled.

What she had decided was that, if she could not live in a time of openness, of ideas and daring, then she could at least behave as if she did. As if she were a citizen of a scientific age.

She wasn’t alone. Others surely had the same thing in mind. Brill had hinted as much. The “token” concession won by the guilds—regaining for men the right to fly—would change Stratos over time, and there were doubtless other moves afoot to nudge society in subtle ways. Gradually diverting the ponderous momentum of a dragon.

Renna set things in motion. And I had a role, as well. For both his sake and mine, I’ll keep on having one.

Still, the Upsala and the Nitocris might be surprised by her reaction, when they made her an offer. She would listen, politely. But, on the other hand…

Why not do what I want, for a change?

It was the final irony. She faced the challenges of independence willingly, equipped, to stand on her own, while at the same time ready to share her heart. It seemed a natural stage in her personal renaissance, cresting from adolescence to true adulthood.

Stratos might take a while longer, but worlds, too, must waken from dreamy illusions of constancy. The cradle built by Lysos no longer protected, but constrained.

Reaching a turn in the road, Maia came upon an overlook facing west. There, slowly setting beyond the mountains, was the great nebula that Stratoins called the Claw—known in Phylum space as God’s Brow. Somewhere in the cold, empty reaches between, vast crystalline ships were bearing down to finish an isolation that Lysos must have known would end, in time. Only then would it become clear if humans had achieved a kind of wisdom here, a new pattern of life worthy of adding to a greater whole.

Suddenly, the surroundings were illuminated by a sharp glow from above. Maia turned to look upward, where a single, starlike glimmer pulsed, throbbing rhythmically as it brightened, until it shone more radiant than any moon, or even summer’s beacon, Wengel Star. Wave-like patterns of color stabbed her eye, causing her to squint in wonder.

At first, Maia felt she had this marvel to herself, amid a city of a hundred thousand souls. Then came sounds—doors banging open, people flooding out of houses and holds, murmuring as they faced skyward and stared. Women, children, and the occasional man, spilled into the streets, pointing at the heavens, some fearfully, others in growing awe.

It took hours before anyone was certain, but by dawn all could tell. The spark was moving away. Leaving the folk of Stratos alone again.

For a time.