Glory Season

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

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

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

I can't blame him. I'm terrible.

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

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

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

The group resumed riding silently, immersed in their own thoughts. A while later, when Maia turned to Re

They slipped out of the maze of canyons after nightfall, climbing a narrow trail south and west of the dark, silent Lerner furnaces. Despite the lower temperatures out on the plain, emerging into the open came as a relief. Starlight spread across the prairie sky, and one of the smaller moons, good-luck Iris, shone cheerily, lifting their spirits. Thalia and Kiel jumped from their mounts on spotting a large patch of glory frost, protected by the northern shadow of a boulder. They rolled in the stuff, pushing it in each other's faces, laughing. When they remounted, Maia saw a light in their eyes, and wasn't sure she liked it. She approved even less when each of them started jockeying to ride near Re

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

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

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

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

As the others made ready for bed, Re

"Don't get lost out there!" Thalia called to Re

"That may not be what needs holding," Kiel commented, and the other vars laughed. All except Maia. She was bothered by Re

"Here," Kiel said, tossing her penlight. "Don't confuse it with anything else!"

Maia winced at the crude humor, but the others thought it terribly fu

Doesn't he realize he's encouraging them? Maia thought irritably. With no aurorae or other summer cues to launch male rut, none of this was likely to go anywhere, and right now the mood was light. But if he feigned interest just to tease the women, it could lead to trouble.

As Re

The fire faded and the big moon, Durga, rose. Thalia snored beside Kiel, and Baltha stretched out next to the horses. Maia was drifting off with her eyes closed, envisioning the tall spires of Port Sanger above the glassy waters of the bay, when a thump yanked her awake again. She looked left, where a blocky object had fallen onto Re

She raised herself to one arm, touching the crumbled block. "What is it?"

"Oh, just a brick. I found a wall . . . and old basement. Not the first I've seen. We've been passing them all day."

Maia watched as he pulled off his shirt. Unshaven and unwashed for several days, he exuded maleness like nothing she had seen or smelled since those sailors aboard the Wotan, and that, after all, had been at sea. Were a man to show up at any civilized town in such condition, he would be arrested for causing a public nuisance. That would go doubly in summer, and fourfold in high winter! Being an alien, perhaps Re

"I never saw any walls," she answered absently. "You mean people lived near here?"

"Mm. From the weathering, I'd say about five hundred years ago."

Maia gaped. "But I thought—"

"You thought this valley was settled for only a century or so, I know. And the planet just a few hundred years before that." Re