Glory Season

"Um," she said, trying to keep up her end of the conversation. "You mean I'm wrong about that?"

He smiled with an affectionate light in his eyes, and Maia felt a mild thrill. "Not your fault. The savants purposely muddy the histories made available outside Caria City. Not by lying, exactly, but giving wrong impressions, and implying that precise dates don't matter.

"It's true that Long Valley was pioneered a century ago, by foremothers of the Perkinite clans living here today. Almost no one had lived here for a long time, but several hundred years before that, this plain used to support a large population. I figure waves of settlement and recession must have crossed this area at least five or six times . . ."

Maia waved a hand in front of her face. "Wait. Wait a minute!" Her voice rose above a whisper, and she paused to bring it down again. "What're you saying? That humans have been on Stratos for … a thousand years?"

Re

Maia could only blink, as if the man had come right out and told her that womankind was descended from rock-salamanders.

"They intended their design to last," he went on, looking at the sky. "And I've got to hand it to them. They did one hell of an impressive job." With that, Re

She answered, "Goodsleep," automatically, and lay back with her eyes closed, but it took a while for her thoughts to settle down. When at last she did drift off, Maia dreamed of puzzle shapes, carved in ancient stone. Blocks and elongated incised forms that shifted and moved over each other like twined snakes coiling across a wall of mysteries.

Maia had wondered if the escape would change rhythm, now that they were in the open. Would the group hole up by day, keeping out of sight until nightfall? After hectic, almost-continuous flight, she wouldn't mind the rest.

That, apparently, was not, the plan. The sun was still low when Baltha shook her awake. "Come on, virgie. Get your tea and biscuits. We're off in a sneeze and a shake."

Thalia was already tending the rekindled fire while Kiel prepared the mounts. Standing and rubbing her eyes, Maia searched for Re

"Hi!" he greeted cheerfully as she walked up, carrying two cups of tea. "One of those for me?"

"Yeah. Here. What're you doing?"

Re

"Your job," she mused. "I never got to ask. What is your job?"

"I'm called a peripatetic, Maia. That means I go from one hominid world to another, negotiating the Great Compact. It sounds grand. But really, that's just to keep me busy. My real job is … well, to keep moving and stay alive."

Maia thought she understood a little of what he had said. "Sounds a lot like my job. Moving. Staying alive."

The man who had been her fellow prisoner laughed appreciatively. "When you put it that way, I guess it's the same for everybody. The only game in town."

Maia recalled the night before, the way shifting winds would bring his aroma as she slept fitfully, waking once to find that she was using his chest as a pillow, and he asleep with one arm over her shoulders. This morning, he seemed a different person. Somehow he had found a way to clean up. His stubble had been scraped away, in places, transforming it into the begi

Moving to place herself downwind, she asked, "Then you aren't here to invade us?"

She had meant it as a joke, to make fun of the rumors spread by fearmongers ever since his ship appeared in the sky, one long year ago. But Re

Maia swallowed. It wasn't the answer she'd expected. "But you—"

She didn't finish. Thalia called, leading a pair of horses, "Off your bottoms, you two! Daylight riding's hard and fast, so let's get at it!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Re

While Maia was looking at the man, Kiel crossed between them and smoothly, blithely, reached out to pinch him as she passed by! "Hey!" Re

Lysos, what a shameless tease, Maia grumbled to herself, irritation pushing aside her earlier train of thought. Miffed without quite knowing why, she ignored the man's glances after that and rode ahead with Baltha for most of that afternoon. Her a

Baltha snorted. "Silly rads," she muttered. "Making a fuss like that, trying to talk to a man, even when it won't get 'em anywhere. As if those two could handle a sparking if they got one now."

"You don't think they're trying to—"

"Naw. Just flirting, prob'ly. Pretty damn pointless. You know the saying —

"Niche and a House, first of all, matter,

Then sibs and allies, who speak the same patter,

Only then, last of all, a man to flatter.

"Still makes plenty sense to me," she finished.

"Mm," Maia answered noncommittally. "What's a … rad?"

Baltha glanced at her, sidelong. "Pretty i

Maia felt her face flush. I know what you've got hidden in your saddlebag, she thought of saying, but refrained.

"Rad stands for 'radical' — which means a bunch of overeducated young city varlings with dimwitted ideas about changing the world. Think they're all smarter than Lysos. Idiots."

Maia recalled now, listening to the ti

"You're talking about my friends," Maia told Baltha, in what she hoped was a severe tone.

Baltha returned a sarcastic moue. "Am I? Now there's a thought. Yer friends. Thanks for setting me straight." She laughed, making Maia feel foolish without knowing why. She turned straight ahead, ignoring the other woman, and for several minutes they rode in silence. Eventually, though, curiosity overcame her resentment. Maia turned and spoke a question in carefully neutral tones. "So, from what you say, I figure you don't want to change the world?"