Now he said to Beneda, “I don’t know whether I want to see Stavia,” knowing perfectly well he would have to see her, but toying with the illusion of independent decision. “Maybe I want to see her. I’ll let you know next time.”
“Make up your mind,” said Beneda. “There’s some talk she’s going to go away again soon as part of an exploration team.”
He was down the stairs and halfway across the parade ground before the sense of her words hit him. Beneda said there was talk of Stavia’s going away as part of an exploration team.
His mouth dropped open and he stopped in his tracks. Exploration team! He had heard it without understanding it. Perhaps this was her response to his letter! But, if so, why hadn’t she told him? Cursing, Chernon scuffed his foot in the dust for a moment, making angular, angry incisions in the soil before turning back the way he had come. Beneda was still standing on the wall, staring down at him. He crossed the parade ground and climbed the stairs again to stand beneath her, hands on hips.
“Tell her I want to see her,” he said. “Tell her to come to the hole in the wall. This afternoon, if she can. Tomorrow at sunset otherwise.”
He didn’t wait for Beneda’s joshing answer. When he had been fifteen, it hadn’t seemed too undignified. Now that he was twenty-four, her little-girl teasing grated on him. Down in the parade ground once more, he walked across it to the northernmost barracks building, then onto the shady lawn of officers’ country. Michael saw him coming and came out onto the porch, a mug of beer in his hand.
“I just found out,” Chernon said. “Stavia may be going out with an exploration team.”
“Well, well, well,” said Michael, leaning back through the door to speak to someone. “Did you hear?”
“I heard.” Stephon came out onto the porch, shutting the door carefully behind him. Through the crack between door and jamb, Chernon saw two strange men sitting at their ease inside. More conspirators from other garrisons. “I’d forgotten it was time for exploring again.”
“They seldom find anything,” commented Michael. “Last time all they came back with was two new kinds of bugs and some plant they could make tea from.”
“She could be planning to let me go along,” Chernon said doubtfully. “Maybe.”
“Be damn sure she does, grub,” Stephon directed. “Make yourself irresistible.”
“You still think this is the year?”
“Looks like it, boy. Some of the other garrisons are just as sure as we are. But we’ve still got this one little, tiny, nagging bother. That weapon old Besset thinks he saw. We’ve been after him, now and then. He still swears to it. Not that it matters greatly. Just that it could make trouble for us.”
“I know.”
“Well, don’t know it out loud,” instructed Michael.
“Not if you don’t want to vanish, just like your old buddy Vinsas did.”
Chernon, not liking this thought, changed the subject. “You really think Stavia knows anything?”
Michael raised his eyes in Stephon’s direction, as though in question.
Stephon frowned, then nodded. “We’ve got a man courting Stavia’s sister, Myra. Myra moved out of Morgot’s house a few years back, but she still spends a lot of time bitching about Morgot and her sister. How Stavia was always the favorite, how Stavia always got to do the interesting things. One of the interesting things Stavia got to do was to go on a trip over toward Susantown with Morgot, and that servitor of theirs.”
“So?”
“Well, the interesting thing is that Myra can remember exactly when it was. It was just before the Susantown war. Before Barten died. Myra remembers that. She’s not ever going to forget that. It was about the same time that Besset and his bunch saw that wagon coming back from Susantown.”
Chernon cast back in memory. “You think Stavia was in that wagon? You think she knows what happened?”
Stephon shrugged. “Likely. Could be.”
“I think Besset made it up. Or he was so drunk he didn’t see anything.”
Michael smiled a particularly menacing smile. “Pretend you believe it, boy. Give her a try. Make yourself pretty and try it.”
There was no point in making himself pretty to talk to Stavia through a hole in the wall, so he didn’t bother. The big old tree at the edge of the parade ground still hid the hole through the wall. It also hid the oiled paper package Chernon had kept hidden there for four years. A book he had stolen from Beneda.
He worked his way into the hollow behind the tree where he could hear if anyone came into the room at the other end of the hole. The package was there, in a crevice in the bark of the tree. One red book. Even though he knew every word of it by heart, even though he found nothing in it of significance, having it was forbidden. The significance lay there, in his defiance of rules, in his contempt for the ordinances. He was not allowed to read, but he would read!
The pages opened almost of themselves. “Migratory societies, the Laplanders.” Sticking his fingers in his ears to shut out the distant sound of cheering from the game fields, Chernon began his ritual of contempt for the ordinances of the women.
STAVIA CAME AGAIN to treat old Bowough Bird, and then yet again, but his condition did not improve. If anything, it worsened. His breathing grew more labored. His mind seemed to wander. Septemius fretted, jittering, gnawing his knuckles and engaging in frivolous, irrelevant expostulation whenever Stavia appeared.
“Hush, man,” she said, drawing him into the adjacent room where the three gray dogs curled on the hearth, raising their black muzzled heads to stare at her, licking their black lips with quick, pink tongues. “You’re worried about him. How old is he, really?”
“Old,” admitted Septemius. “You know as much as I how old. He doesn’t remember now, if he ever did. I know how old I am, which is sixty something, but
