Glory Season

frost, or disease, and suddenly they use sex like mad, mixing genes for new combinations, to meet new challenges.”

Baltha and the reavers wanted enough chaos to knock loose some ancient clans, but solely in order that they might take those heights. It was a scheme more classically Lysian than either of the Perkinite or Radical dogmas. The Founders included vars like me because you can never be sure stability will last. They must have known it would mean some vars plotting to help nature along.

In fact, it must happen more often than she had imagined. Whenever such a scheme succeeded, it would be toned down in the histories. No sense encouraging other vars, downstream, to try the same thing! If Baltha managed to whelp a great house, she would not be depicted as a pirate by her heirs. It made Maia wonder about those embroidered tales told about the original Lamai. Had she, in fact, been a robber? A conniver? Perhaps Leie had it right, choosing such company. If Maia’s twin had tapped a ruthless side to their joint nature, should she be cheered, rather than reproved?

How does Renna fit into all this? Maia wondered. Do the reavers plan to provoke some sort of war among factions on the Reigning Council? Or retribution from the stars? That would shake things up, all right. Perhaps more than they realize.

She worried. What is Renna doing, right now?

Earlier, while twilight settled, Maia had spoken to Brod about these quandries. He was a good listener, for a man, and seemed genuinely understanding. Maia felt grateful for his company and friendship. Nevertheless, after a while she had run out of energy. In darkness, she eventually lay quietly, letting Brod’s body warmth help stave off the night chill. Breathing his male musk, Maia dozed while an odd sensation of well-being pervaded within the circle of his arm. Half-dreaming, she let images glide through her mind—of aurorae, streaming emerald and blue-gold sky curtains above the glaciers of home. And Wengel Star, brighter than the beacon of Lighthouse Sanctuary, at the harbor mouth. Those summertime themes blended with a favorite memory of autumn, when men returned from exile, singing joyously amid swirls of multicolored, freshly fallen leaves.

Seasons mixed in Maia’s fantasy. Still asleep, her nostrils flared in sudden, unprovoked recollection—a distant scent of frost.

She awakened, blinking rapidly, knowing too little time had passed for it to be dawn. Yet she could see a little. Moonlight shone through cracks in the cave entrance. The whites of Brod’s eyes were visible.

“You were quivering. Is something wrong?”

She sat up, embarrassed, though she knew not why.

Within, Maia felt an odd stirring, an emptiness that had nothing to do with hunger for food.

“I… was dreaming about home.”

He nodded. “Me too. All this talk about heretics and rads and Kings, it got me thinking about a family I knew, back in Joannaborg, who followed the Yeown Path.”

“Yeown?” Maia frowned in puzzlement. “Oh, I’ve heard of them. Isn’t that where… it’s the clone daughters who go out to find niches, and the vars who stay behind?”

“That’s right. Used to be some of the cities along the Mediant had whole quarters devoted to Yeown enclaves, surrounded by Getta walls. I’ve seen pictures. Most boys didn’t go to sea, but stayed and studied crafts along with their summer sisters, then married into other Yeown clans. Kind of weird to imagine, but nice in a way.”

Maia saw Brod’s point of view. Such a way of life offered more options for a boy—and for summer girls who stayed where they were born, living with their mothers. …

And fathers, she supposed, finding it hard to conceive.

Without her recent studies, Maia might not have perceived how, unfortunately, the Yeown way ran counter to the drives of Stratoin biology. There were basic genetic reasons why time reinforced the tendency to need a winter birth first, or for mothers to feel more intense devotion to clone-daughters than their var-offspring. Humans were flexible creatures, and ideological fervor might overcome such drives for a generation, or several, but it wasn’t surprising that Yeown heresies remained rare.

Brod continued. “I got to thinking about them because, well, you mentioned that book about the way people lived on Florentina World. You know, where they still had marriage? But I can tell you it wasn’t like that in the Yeown home I knew. The husbands…” He spoke the word with evident embarrassment. “The husbands didn’t make much noise or fuss. There was no talk among the neighbors of violence, even in summer. Of course, the men were still outnumbered by their wives and daughters, so it wasn’t exactly like a Phylum world. With everyone watching, they kept real discreet, so as not to give Perkie agitators any excuse …”

Brod was rambling, and Maia found it hard to see what he was driving at. Did the lad have his own heretical sympathies? Did he dream of a way to live in one home year-round, in lasting contact with mates and offspring, experiencing less continuity than a mother, but far more than men normally knew on Stratos? It might sound fine in abstract, but how did the two sexes keep from getting on each other’s nerves? Clearly, poor Brod was an idealist of the first water.

Maia recalled the one man she had lived near while growing up. An orthodox clan like Lamatia would never condone the sort of situation Brod described in a Yeown commune, but it did offer occasional, traditional refuge to retirees, like Old Coot Bennett.

Maia felt a shiver, recalling the last time she had looked in Bennett’s rheumy eyes. Demi-leaves had swirled in autumnal cyclones, just like the image in her recent dream—as if subconsciously she had already been thinking about the coot. I used to wonder if he was the only man I’d ever know more than in passing. But Renna, and now Brod, have got me thinking peculiar thoughts. Keep it up, and I’ll be a raving heretic, too.

This was getting much too intense. She tried returning things to an abstract plane.

“I imagine Yeownists would get along with Kiel and her Radicals.”

Brod shrugged. “I don’t think the few remaining Yeowns would risk trouble, making political statements. They have enough problems nowadays. With the rate of summer births going up all over Stratos, making everybody so nervous, Perkinites are always looking for var-loving scapegoats.

“But y’know, I was thinking about the people who once dwelled here in the Dragons’ Teeth. Maybe they started out as Yeowh followers, back at the time of the Defense.

“Think about it, Maia. I’ll bet these sanctuaries weren’t originally just for men. Imagine the technology they must’ve had! Men couldn’t keep that up all by themselves. Nor could they have ever managed to beat the Enemy alone. I’m sure there were women living here, year-round, alongside the men. Somehow, they must’ve known a secret for managing that.”

Maia was unconvinced. “If so, it didn’t last. After the Defense, there came the Kings.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Later it corrupted into a fit of patriarchism. But everything was in chaos after the war. One brief aberration, no matter how scary, can’t excuse the Council for burying the history of this place! For centuries or more, men and women must’ve worked together here, back when it was one of the most important sites on Stratos.”

The temptation to argue was strong, but Maia refrained from pouring water on her friend’s enthusiastic theory. Renna had taught her to look back through a thick glass, one or two thousand years, and she knew how tricky that lens could be. Perhaps, with access to the Great Library in Caria, Brod’s speculation might lead to something. Right now, though, the poor fellow seemed obsessed with scenarios, based more on hope than on data, in which females and males somehow stayed together. Did he picture some ancient paradise amid these jagged isles, in that heady time before the Kings’ conceit toppled before the Great Clans? It seemed a waste of mental energy.

Maia felt overwhelming drowsiness climb her weary arms and legs. When Brod started to speak again, she patted his hand. “That’s ’nuff for now, okay? Let’s talk later. See you in the mornin’, friend.”

The young man paused, then put his arm around her as she lowered her head once more. “Yeah. Good rest, Maia.”

“Mm.”

This time it proved easy to doze off, and she did sleep well, for a while.

Then more dreams encroached. A mental image of the nearby, blood-bronze metal wall shimmered in ghostly overlay, superimposing upon the much-smaller, stony puzzle under Lamatia Hold. Totally different