“Warrior, I bring you your son,” Morgot said, pushing Jerby a step or two in front of her. Jerby stood there with his legs apart and his lower lip protruding, the way he did when he wanted to cry but wouldn’t. His little coat was bright with embroidered panels down the front. His boots were worked with beads of shell and turquoise. Morgot had spent evening after evening on those boots, working away in the candlelight, with Joshua threading the beads on the needle for her and saying soft words to comfort her.
The warrior stared down at Jerby and Jerby stared back, his mouth open. The warrior knelt down, put his finger to the flask of honey at his waist and then to Jerby’s lips. “I offer you the sweetness of honor,” he whispered, even his whisper penetrating the silence of the plaza like a sword, so sharp it did not hurt, even as it cut you to pieces.
Jerby licked his lips, then grinned, and Michael laid his hand on the little boy’s shoulder.
“I give him into your keeping until his fifteenth year,” Morgot went on. “Except that he shall return to his home in Women’s Country during the carnival holidays, twice each year until that time.”
“A warrior chooses his way at fifteen.” Michael was thundering once more. He had a voice that would bellow across a noisy battlefield.
“In that year he shall choose,” said Morgot, stepping back and leaving Jerby there all alone.
The little boy started to turn, started to say, “Mommy,” but Michael had seized him up, lifted him high, high above his head, high above his dark eyes and laughing mouth, high above his white gleaming teeth and cruelly curving lips as he cried, “Warriors! Behold my son!”
Then there was a wild outcry from the warriors, a hullabaloo of shouts and cries, slowing at last into a steady, bottomless chant, “Telemachus, Telemachus, Telemachus,” so deep it made your teeth shiver. Telemachus was the ancient one, the ideal son, who defended the honor of his father, or so Joshua said. The warriors always invoked Telemachus on occasions like this.
Stavia scarcely noticed the uproar. One of the tunic-clad boys was watching her, a boy about thirteen years old. It was an eager, impatiently sulky look with something in it that stirred her, making her feel uncertain and uncomfortable. Somehow the boy looked familiar to her, as though she had seen him before, but she couldn’t remember where. Modestly, as befitted anyone under fifteen, she dropped her eyes. When she peeked at him from beneath her brows, however, he was still looking at her.
There was another rat-a-blam from the drums and a rattle of shouted commands. The warriors moved. Suddenly the white-tunicked boy was beside her, staring intently into her face as the plaza filled with wheeling warriors, plumes high, guidons flapping in the breeze, feet hammering on the stones.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Stavia,” she murmured.
“Is Morgot your mother?”
She nodded, wondering at this.
“I’m her friend Sylvia’s son,” he said. “Chernon.”
Then someone took him by the arm, he was pulled back into the general melee, and the marching men hammered their way through the gate, drowning out Jerby’s cries. Stavia could see her brother’s tearful little face over Michael’s shoulder. The white-clad boys boiled through the opening like surf, and the Gate of the Warriors’ Sons closed behind them with a ring of finality.
Chernon had eyes the color of honey, she thought. And hair that matched, only a little darker. He had looked familiar because he looked like Beneda, except around the mouth. The mouth looked swollen, somehow. Pouty. As though someone had hurt him. His hair and eyes were just like Beneda’s, though. And his jawline, too. This was the brother Beneda had mentioned! Why did he never visit his family during carnival? Why had Stavia never seen him before?
Morgot and Sylvia had turned away from the plaza to move up the stairs that led to the top of the wall. Stavia climbed behind them to find a low place where she could look over the parapet into the parade ground outside the city. The ceremony of the Warrior’s Son was continuing there.
Michael’s century came marching out through the armory doors, Jerby high on Michael’s shoulder while the men cheered. As they came through, the trumpets began a long series of fanfares and flourishes, the drums thundered, the great bells near the parade ground monument began to peal. At the foot of the monument was a statue of two warriors in armor, large and small, father and son. Before this monument Michael went down on one knee, pushing Jerby down before him so that the little boy knelt also. There was a moment’s silence, all the warriors pulling off their helms and bowing their heads, then the drums and trumpets and bells began once more as the procession swept away toward the barracks.
From the tail of the procession, one of the white-clad boys looked back and raised a hand toward Stavia.
“Who are those statues?” asked Beneda.
“Ulysses and Telemachus,” said Sylvia abstractedly.
“Who’s Ulysses?”
“Odysseus,” murmured Morgot. “It’s just another name for Odysseus. Telemachus was his son.”
“Oh,” said Beneda. “The same Odysseus that Iphigenia talks about in our play? The one at Troy?”
“The same one.”
The women went down the stairs, across the plaza to the street, the way they had come. Myra was walking beside them now, her arm around her mother’s waist. Both Morgot and Sylvia were weeping. Beneda ran to catch up, but Stavia dawdled, looking back over her shoulder. Chernon. She would remember the name.
SITTING IN THE FIRELIT
