Corrig came back with the teapot. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed, very gently, as he filled her cup.
Beneda looked up, saying, “What did you say, Stavvy?”
“Nothing, Beneda. I was just thanking Corrig for the tea.”
“Well, no more for me, thanks. I’ve got to be getting back to the children. Mother has an early morning meeting with the weavers’ guild over the linen quota, so she needs to get to bed.”
“How is your mother?” asked Morgot. “And your grandchild?”
“Sylvia’s fine. The baby’s teething and cross as two sticks, but the girls are all well. We want you both to come over for supper sometime soon. Now, where did I put my shawl?” She was halfway to the door, still bubbling with words and short phrases.
When she had gone, Stavia sighed. “We used to be best friends.”
Both the twins, Kostia and Tonia, looked up, but it was Tonia who said, “So far as Beneda’s concerned, you still are, love.”
Stavia caught her breath. “It’s true. I feel like such a hypocrite. It hurts.”
“I know. Are you going to be all right now?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m going to be all right.” She was going to be all right. Almost everyone went through this. Everyone was all right. But now that Dawid was really gone, now that he wouldn’t be coming home anymore, she was remembering things she hadn’t really thought of in years—not memories of Dawid so much as memories of Chernon, of Beneda, of her own family. “Things not so much lost as unremembered,” she murmured to herself. Things from childhood.
FOR SEVERAL DAYS AFTER JERBY HAD BEEN TAKEN to his warrior father, Morgot had grieved a lot. Young Stavia was very aware of it, not so much because she was alert to her mother’s moods, though she was, but because she had wanted to ask Morgot about the boy in the plaza. Chernon. Stavia didn’t want to remind Morgot of anything to do with that day while Morgot was still grieving so much. Each time Stavia had delayed asking, she had congratulated herself on being sensitive and compassionate, giving herself little love pats, contrasting her own behavior with that of Myra, who never tried to be sensitive about anything. Stavia kept assuring herself she was behaving in a properly adult manner. That business about the tantrums still rankled, and she was trying to get over it.
A week went by while Morgot moped and Stavia watched. Then they were in the kitchen one night, and Stavia realized that Morgot hadn’t cried all day.
She kept her voice carefully casual as she said, “Sylvia’s son, Chernon, came up to me in the plaza, Mother. He asked me who I was, and he told me who he was. Why hasn’t he ever come home on holidays?”
Morgot stepped back from the iron-topped brick stove, the long fork dangling from her hand as she pushed hair back from her forehead with her wrist. In the pan, bits of chicken sputtered in a spoonful of fat. Morgot put down the fork and dumped a bowl of vegetables into the pan, covering it with a high-domed lid, before turning to give Stavia a long, measuring look. It was an expression she had whenever she was deciding whether something should be said or not said, and there was no hurrying it. The pan sizzled and hissed. Morgot uncovered it and stirred, saying, “Sylvia thought it was best. When Chernon was about nine or ten, he came home for carnival and said some ugly, terrible things to Sylvia. Things no boy of that age could possibly have thought up.”
“But you said boys do that. You said that’s just warriors’ ritual, Mother.”
“Yes, there is some ritual insult that goes on, though most warriors are honorable enough not to suggest it and some boys are courteous enough not to be part of it. This stuff was far worse than that, Stavia. Sick, perverted filth. We learned that one of the warriors had instructed Chernon to make these vile accusations and demands of Sylvia. The warrior’s name was Vinsas, and the things he wanted Chernon to say were… degenerate. Very personal, and utterly mad. Sylvia was taken totally by surprise. Hearing them from a child, her own child… well, it was unnerving. Disgusting.
“It turned out that Vinsas had told the boy he had to come back to the garrison and swear he had followed instructions on threat of cruel punishment.”
“Well then, Chernon didn’t mean it.”
“We knew that, love. It wasn’t Chernon’s fault. But Chernon was being used in a very unhealthy way, don’t you see? These weren’t things a ten-year-old boy should even think of, and yet by the rules and discipline of the garrison, he was obliged to obey a senior warrior. It was unfair to Chernon to put him in that position.” She lifted the pan onto the tiled table and left it there, steam escaping gently from around the lid.
“What happened?”
“Sylvia suggested that since the
