Glory Season

standards, unless they were cadet branches of more-extended hives elsewhere.

Maia’s benefactor came from such a branch. She was a Lerner. Maia knew the family, whose scattered offshoots had wedged holdings throughout Eastern Continent, wherever there were ore deposits too meager to attract big mining concerns, and communities with needs a smalltime forging operation could fill. Hard experience had taught Lerner Clan the limits of their talents. Whenever one of their operations grew large enough to draw competition, they would always sell out and move on.

It’s a niche, though, Maia supposed. Few vars established a nameline of their own, let alone one so numerous. She was in no position to judge.

Calma Lerner seemed friendly enough. A woman with man-sized hands nearly as hard as the gritty, reddish ingots Maia had helped load, brought on today’s train from far-off Grange Head. The alloys would be mixed with local iron, using household recipes passed down from mother to daughter for generations, to make unpretentious Lerner Steel.

Back in Port Sanger, the local Lerners did not endure the prairie sun, and so were much paler. Yet, there was a sense of familiarity, as if she and Calma ought to be gossiping about acquaintances they had in common. Of course they had none. The familiarity went one way. Nor would Calma likely recall Maia if they met again. People tended not to bother memorizing, or even much noticing, a face with just one owner.

Still, as tawny countryside rolled slowly by, the older woman began showing some of her clan’s well-known affability, letting herself be drawn out about life on this great, flat, alluvial plain. Calma and her family worked the earth out north of Holly Lock, where faulting had brought to surface a rare fold of bedrock containing a promising mix of elements. Back when settlement at this end of the valley was still new, three young cadets from an established Lerner hold had arrived from the coast to work those narrow seams and set up smithies. Across four generations there had been hard times and some years of prosperity. There were now six adults in the midget offshoot clan, and four clone daughters of various ages. That did not count one summerling boy, plus a dozen or so transient var employees.

When she discovered that Maia’s education included a tape course in chemistry, Calma began warming to her, growing effusive about the challenges and delights of metallurgy on the frontier—shaping and transforming the raw stuff of the planet to satisfy human needs. “You can’t imagine the satisfaction,” she said, waving broad arms toward the horizon, where the setting sun seemed to set fire to a sea of grain. “There’s great opportunities out here for a youngster with the right hardworkin’ attitude. Yes. Fine opportunities indeed.”

Out of courtesy, and because she had taken a liking to her companion, Maia refrained from laughing aloud. Some dead ends weren’t hard to spot, and poor Calma was describing a real loser. “I’ll think about it,” Maia replied carefully, concealing amusement.

With a sudden pang, she realized she had been filing away the Lerner clone’s words. Storing them with the habitual intention of repeating them later … for Leie. She couldn’t help it. Patterns of a lifetime die hard. Sometimes harder than frail human beings.

“You’d think they already had enough wine for a funeral,” she recalled complaining to her twin one winter when they were four, as they labored at a ratcheted crank, operating pulleys to descend into a pit of stone. “Are they gonna have us goin’ up and down all night?”

“Could be,” Leie had replied breathlessly, her voice echoing down the narrow dumbwaiter shaft. Clicking softly, the winch marked each centimeter of descent like the beating of a clock. “There was glory frost on the sills this morning an’ you know that puts ’em in a party mood. I’m bettin’ the Lamais have more in mind than a ceremony to mulch three grandmas.”

Maia recalled wincing at the sarcastic image. Although Lamais were cool toward their var-daughters, they tended to mellow with age, even going as far as showing real affection late in life. Two of the departed grannies had almost been nice. Besides, it was wrong to speak ill of the dead. They say Stratos reuses all the atoms we give back to her, and each piece of us goes on to help new life.

Abstract solace had seemed pallid that day, after Maia’s first direct contact with death. The cramped elevator car had felt stifling, rocking unpleasantly as they turned the crank. Their lanterns set the stone walls glittering where moisture leaked from the poorly caulked kitchens above, and echoes of their heavy breathing had fluttered like trapped souls against the walls of the pit. When the wooden box hit bottom, they stepped out with relief. In one direction, sealed bins contained enough grains and emergency supplies to withstand a siege. Tier upon tier of shelving held kegs and glittering rows of wax-dipped bottles.

Carrying a hand-scrawled list, Leie sauntered toward the wine racks to fetch the vintages they had been sent for. Knowing her sister wouldn’t mind a brief desertion, Maia had walked down another narrow aisle, using her lantern to play light across a stone portal enclosing a door made lavishly of reinforced steel.

The surrounding rock was a maze of deep cuts and grooves. Some incisions were twisty, others straight and wide enough to slip a blade inside. A few knobs would depress a little if you pushed, emitting enticing clicks, hinting at some hidden mechanism.

The one time she had asked a Lamai about the door, Maia had received a slap that left her ears ringing. Leie used to fantasize about what mysterious riches lay beyond, while Maia was seized by the puzzle itself. Smuggling paper and pencil to trace the outlines, she would spend hours contemplating combinations and secret codes. It had to be a tough one, since the Lamai blithely sent unsupervised varlings to the cellar, on errands.

On that day, after finishing loading bottles aboard the dumbwaiter, Leie had come alongside to put an arm around Maia’s shoulder. “Don’t let the vrilly jigsaw get you down. Maybe we can sneak a hydraulic jack down here, one smuggy piece at a time. Bam! No more mystery!”

“It’s not that,” Maia had answered, shaking her head despondently. “I was just thinking about those old women, those grandmas. We knew ’em. They were always around while we were little, like the sun an’ air. Now they’re just lying in the chapel, all stiff and …” She shivered. The funeral had been their first to attend, as four-year-olds. “And all those others in the first row, lookin’ like they knew it was gonna be their turn soon.”

Full-blood Lamais normally lived a ripe twenty-eight or twenty-nine Stratoin years. When one of them went, however, a whole “class” tended to follow within weeks. No one expected this to be the last funeral of the season, or of the month.

“I know,” Leie replied in a voice gone unusually reflective. “It scared me, too.”

Maia had rested her head against her sister’s, comforted by knowing someone understood the questions troubling her soul.

On their way back up the dank elevator shaft, Leie had tried to lighten the mood by relating some gossip picked up that morning from another town varling. It seemed several younger sisters of Saxton Clan had started a ruckus near the harbor, harassing sailors until, in desperation, the men called the Guardia and—

A covey of spiny-fringed pou birds erupted across the road, causing the sash-horses to neigh and prance while Calma Lerner pulled the reins, speaking to soothe the frightened beasts. The birds vanished into a cane brake, pursued by a clutch of pale foxes.

Maia blinked, holding her breath for several seconds. The flood of memory had briefly seemed more vivid than the dusty present. Perhaps the rocking wooden bench seat reminded her of the creaking dumbwaiter. Or some other subconscious cue, a smell, or glitter in the twilight, had triggered the unsought fit of retrospection.

Funny. Now that her train of thought was broken, Maia couldn’t recall what choice bit of hearsay Leie had shared with her that day, while the two of them hung suspended between cellar and scullery. Only that she had guffawed, covering her mouth to keep her squeals from echoing throughout the house. Her sides had hurt for hours afterward, both from laughter and the effort of suppressing it, and Leie had joined in, giggling, barely able to hold the crank still. A wine bottle tipped over, cracking and dribbling red liquid across the wooden floor. The crimson pool had spread and found its way through wooden slats to audibly splatter, after a brief delay, into the tomblike cellar far below.

Why don’t you leave me alone? Maia thought plaintively, shaking her head and fighting tears. Memory wasn’t what she wanted or needed, right now. Poignancy was a bitter tang in her mouth and eyes.

Yet it was a mixed thing. While renewed mourning hurt, the sweetness of that recollected laughter seemed to suffuse a deeper part of her, permeating the wound with a sad pleasure, a tryst solace. Against her will, Maia