“Mistress — ?”
Snake turned. The young servant glanced around as if afraid someone might see them together.
“What’s your name?”
“Larril.”
“Larril, my name is Snake, and I hate being called ‘mistress.’ All right?”
Larril nodded but did not use Snake’s name.
Snake sighed to herself. “What’s the matter?”
“Healer… in your room I saw… a servant should not see some things. I don’t want to shame any member of this family.” Her voice was shrill and strained. “But… but Gabriel — he is—” Her words caught in confusion and shame. “If I asked Brian what to do he would have to tell his master. That would be… unpleasant. But you mustn’t be hurt. I never thought the mayor’s son would—”
“Larril,” Snake said, “Larril, it’s all right. He told me everything. The responsibility is mine.”
“You know the — the danger?”
“He told me everything,” she said again. “There’s no danger to me.”
“You’ve done a kind thing,” Larril said abruptly.
“Nonsense. I wanted him. And I have a good deal more experience at control than a twelve year old. Or an eighteen year old, for that matter.”
Larril avoided her gaze. “So do I,” she said. “And I’ve felt so sorry for him. But I — I was afraid. He is so beautiful, one might think of… one might lapse, without meaning to. I couldn’t take the chance. I still have another six months before my life is mine again.”
“You were bonded?”
Larril nodded, “I was born in Mountainside. My parents sold me. Before the mayor’s new laws, they were allowed to do that.” The tension in her voice belied her matter-of-fact words. “It was a long time before I heard the rumors that bonding had been forbidden here, but when I did, I escaped and came back.” She looked up, almost crying. “I didn’t break my word—” She straightened and spoke more confidently. “I was a child, and I had no choice in the bonding. I owed no driver my loyalty. But the city bought my papers. I do owe loyalty to the mayor.”
Snake realized how much courage it had taken Larril to speak as she had. “Thank you,” Snake said. “For telling me about Gabriel. None of this will go any farther. I’m in your debt.”
“Oh, no, healer, I did not mean—”
There was something in Larril’s voice, a sudden shame, that Snake found disturbing. She wondered if Larril thought her own motives in speaking to Snake were suspect.
“I did mean it,” Snake said again. “Is there some way I can help you?”
Larril shook her head, once, quickly, a gesture of denial that said no to her more than to Snake. “No one can help me, I think.”
“Tell me.”
Larril hesitated, then sat on the floor and angrily jerked up the cuff of her pants.
Snake sat on her heels beside her.
“Oh, my gods,” Snake said.
Larril’s heel had been pierced, between the bone and the Achilles tendon. It looked to Snake as if someone had used a hot iron on her. The scar accommodated a small ring of a gray, crystalline material. Snake took Larril’s foot in one hand and touched the ring. It showed no visible joining.
Snake frowned. “This was nothing but cruelty.”
“If you disobey them they have the right to mark you,” Larril said. “I’d tried to escape before and they said they had to make me remember my place.” Anger overcame the quietness of her voice. Snake shivered.
“Those will always bind me,” Larril said. “If it was just the scars I wouldn’t mind so much.” She withdrew her foot from Snake’s hands. “You’ve seen the domes in the mountains? That’s what the rings are made of.”
Snake glanced at her other heel, also scarred, also ringed. Now she recognized the gray, translucent substance. But she had never before seen it made into anything except the domes, which lay mysterious and inviolable in unexpected places.
“The smith tried to cut that one,” Larril said. “When he didn’t even mark it he was so embarrassed he broke an iron rod with one blow, just to prove he could.” She touched the fine tough strand of her tendon, trapped within the delicate ring. “Once the crystal hardens it’s there forever. Like the domes. Unless you cut the tendon, and then you’re lame. Sometimes I think I could almost stand that.” She jerked the cuff of her pants down to cover the ring. “As you see, no one can help. It’s vanity, I know it. Soon I
“I can’t help you here,” Snake said. “And it would be dangerous.”
“You mean you could do it?”
“It could be done, it could be tried, at the healers’ station.”
“Oh, healer—”
“Larril, there would be a risk.” On her own ankle she showed what would have to be done. “We wouldn’t cut the tendon, we’d detach it. Then the ring could come off. But you’d be in a cast for quite a while. And there’s no certainty that the tendons would heal properly, your legs might never be as strong as they are now. The tendons might not even re-attach at all.”
“I see…” Larril said, with hope and joy in her voice, perhaps not really hearing Snake at all.
“Will you promise me one thing?”
“Yes, healer, of course.”
“Don’t decide what to do yet. Don’t decide right after your service to Mountainside is over. Wait a few months. Be certain. Once you’re free you might decide it doesn’t matter to you any more.”
Larril glanced up quizzically and Snake knew she would have asked how the healer would feel in her position, but thought the question insolent.
“Will you promise?”
“Yes, healer., I promise.”
They stood up.
“Well, good night,” Snake said.
“Good night, healer.”
Snake started down the corridor.
“Healer?”
“Yes?”
Larril flung her arms around Snake and hugged her. “Thank you!” Embarrassed, she withdrew. They both turned to go their ways, but Snake glanced back.
“Larril, where do the drivers get the rings? I never heard of anyone who could work the dome material.”
“The city people give it to them,” Larril said. “Not enough to make anything useful. Just the rings.”
“Thank you.”
Snake went back to bed, musing about Center, which gave chains to slavers but refused to talk to healers.
Chapter 7
Snake awoke before Gabriel, at the very end of night. As dawn broke, the faint gray light illuminated the bedroom. Snake lay on her side, propped on her elbow, and watched Gabriel sleep. He was, if that were possible, even more beautiful asleep than awake.
Snake reached out, but stopped before she touched him. Usually she liked to make love in the morning. But she did not want Gabriel to wake up.
Frowning, she lay back and tried to trace her reaction. Last night had not been the most memorable sexual encounter of her life, for Gabriel was, though not exactly clumsy, still awkward with inexperience. Yet, though she had not completely been satisfied, neither had she found sleeping with Gabriel at all unpleasant.
Snake forced her thoughts deeper, and found that they disturbed her. They were all too much like fear. Certainly she did not fear Gabriel: the very idea was ridiculous. But she had never before been with a man who could not control his fertility. He made her uneasy, she could not deny it. Her own control was complete; she had confidence in herself on that matter. And even if by some freakish accident she did become pregnant, she could abort it without the overreaction that had nearly killed Gabriel’s friend Leah. No, her uneasiness had little basis in the reality of what could happen. It was merely the knowledge of Gabriel’s incapability that made her hold back from him, for she had grown up knowing her lovers would be controlled, knowing they had exactly the same confidence in her. She could not give that confidence to Gabriel, even though his difficulties were not his fault.
For the first time she truly understood how lonely he had been for the last three years, how everyone must have reacted to him and how he must have felt about himself. She sighed in sadness for him and reached out to him, stroking his body with her fingertips, waking him gradually, leaving behind all her hesitation and uneasiness.
Carrying her serpent-case, Snake hiked down the cliff to get Swift. Several of her town patients needed looking at again, and she would spend the afternoon giving vaccinations. Gabriel remained in his father’s house, packing and preparing for his trip.
Squirrel and Swift gleamed with brushing. The stable-master, Ras, was nowhere in sight. Snake entered Squirrel’s stall to inspect his newly shod feet. She scratched his ears and told him aloud that he needed exercise or he would founder. Above her, the loose hay in the loft rustled softly, but though Snake waited, she heard nothing more.
“I’ll have to ask the stablemaster to chase you around the field,” she said to her pony, and waited again.
“I’ll ride him for you, mistress,” the child whispered.
