“What’s the real reason they don’t let them fight until they’re twenty-five?”
“You know. They told you in women’s studies.”
“I know what they told me. They’re strongest and healthiest and most virile between the ages of eighteen to twenty-five, and if they’re going to father babies, that’s the time to do it. So, they aren’t risked in battle until they’re older. But is that the real reason?”
“What else?”
“I thought it was maybe to give them a few more years to decide if they want to come back or not.”
“Not very many come back after they’re twenty,” Myra said definitely, her lightly freckled face drawn into a frown. “Hardly any at all.”
“I’ll bet you were hoping….”
“I wasn’t hoping anything!” she said angrily. “Don’t be silly. Barten is proud to be a warrior. He’d never do that. Morgot says it’s better if they don’t get talked into it, either, or you end up with someone coming back who’s just miserable. ‘A warrior home against his will remains at heart a warrior still.’ Do you want to do your lines anymore?”
“No. I’m only second understudy, anyhow. I won’t get to play a part until next year or the year after.” Stavia found herself slightly annoyed about this, mostly because the young woman playing the lead was, in Stavia’s opinion, very bad at it. “Michy’s doing Iphigenia this year.”
“Michy?” she asked incredulously. “You’re having a fat ghost?”
“Well, I suppose Iphigenia could have been fat. Who knows? Maybe that’s why they wanted to sacrifice her. I suppose if you sacrificed a goat or a sheep, you’d pick a nice fat one.”
“A fat ghost!”
“Who’s a fat ghost?” Joshua asked from the door.
Seeing Myra’s lips set into a stubborn line, Stavia explained, hastily. Myra was continuing to be unpleasant around Joshua, not answering direct questions, pretending not to see him. If this was the effect Barten was having on her, Stavia didn’t look forward to meeting Barten, blue-blue eyes or not. Not that she’d probably have a chance to meet him. During carnival the warriors stayed near the plaza where the assignation houses and carnival taverns and amusements were; they weren’t allowed in the residential sections of town, and Stavia was too young to go tavern-hopping.
“Michy will probably be dressed in floating draperies and you won’t be able to tell what shape she is,” Joshua commented. “Myra, Morgot wants to see you, please, as soon as possible. And Stavia, I ran into your physiology instructress at the hospital. She sent a message that she wants to talk to you and Morgot about your going to the basic medical institute at Abbyville.”
“The institute?”
“At Abbyville. Oh, she doesn’t expect you’d want to go for a few years yet. It’s a nine-year course if you do the whole thing, seven years’ study plus two years internship, with not much opportunity to come home. She wants to know how you feel about it, and how Morgot feels about your going, of course….”
“Why would she have told you that?” Myra asked in a dangerously unpleasant voice. “What business is it of yours?”
Joshua looked at her, a long, rather quiet look, as he sometimes looked at weeds in the garden, deciding whether to pull them out or not. “Perhaps she values my opinion of Stavia’s talents, Myra. I am asked from time to time to offer opinions concerning both of you.”
He turned and left.
Myra took a quick breath, as though she had been slapped.
“Well, you had it coming,” muttered Stavia.
“Shut up.”
“I will. But if a few soppy looks from the walls make people as rude as you, Myra, I hope I never go near the walls again.”
“It’s none of his business!”
“It wasn’t about you. It was about me! And I’m willing to have Joshua talk about me, so it was his business. Who the hell are you, all of a sudden?”
“It was about me! He said he gave opinions about me, and if you want to know who I am, I’m someone who’s sick and tired of having a… a serving man sticking his nose in my business.”
“Oh, you’d rather some warrior stuck his nose somewhere else, huh?”
“Stavia!” Morgot’s voice snapped like a whip. “Myra! Will you come with me, please?”
Stavia shrunk into herself, wishing she were invisible. Fighting with Myra was something she’d promised herself not to do. Myra flounced out of the room, and Stavia heard her voice through the closed door. “None of his business…. Don’t know why you…? Barten says….” then the crack of her mother’s voice.
“Never say to me ‘Barten says.’ Never. This is Women’s Country, and if you cannot hold to its courtesies you can leave it.”
Silence. Oh, Great Mother.
Weeping.
The door opened. “Stavia?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Myra would be less likely to forget herself if you didn’t argue with her. Her current state of mind should be obvious to you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ve learned something about it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You know what it’s called.”
“Infatuation.”
“You know what it does?”
“‘Infatuation makes otherwise reasonable women behave in unreasonable and illogical ways. It is a result of biological forces incident to racial survival.’”
“And?”
“And, ‘Infatuation should be regarded with forbearance. Though episodic, it is almost invariably self-limiting.’”
“Stavvy….”
“Mom.”
“She upset you, didn’t she?”
“She was so… she was nasty to Joshua.”
“I know. Remember it. That way, if you ever go through what Myra’s going through, you won’t be as foolish as she is.”
“She won’t just give up on the ordinances, will she? She won’t just leave?”
“Become a Gypsy?” Morgot chewed her lip, as though she had had a sudden thought. “I doubt it. But if she does, well, almost all of them who try it come back in a few months.” Morgot looked even more thoughtful.
“I know. But there’s quarantine.”
“Only for as long as necessary to be sure they’re not sick. Well, we’ll do what we can to forestall that. Speaking of Gypsies, I’m making the weekly health inspection at the camp this afternoon. I think it would be a good idea if you came along.”
“I… I
