The Gate to Women's Country (30 page)

“Unfriendly, from your tone.”

“Stavia, the population there is sparse, suspicious, and unprofitable. The river courses tend to be more like canyons
than valleys, with precipitous sides of unscalable stone and no way in or out except at the northern ends or deep to the south where the watercourses fall from the heights. We didn't go into the valleys by choice. We were driven to take shelter in one of those sheer-sided traps because of a great storm. It was many years ago. At the time we had my cousin Hepwell's acrobatic troupe traveling with us, and there were a dozen strong men along. If it hadn't been for that, we'd be there still, for the natives were strangely disinclined to let us be on our way. However, most of their older menfolk—their elders—were off at some kind of religious observance, so they hadn't quite the force they needed to keep us against our will.”

“Fertile land, though?”

“Amazingly, from what I remember. Flat fields along the streams. Green pastures. Wooded along the streams, but not many trees elsewhere except upon the heights. They had sheep and goats and chickens, I remember that, and gardens. Fruit trees. I don't remember it well, but then it was thirty or forty years ago, Medic. I can't say I remember it rightly.”

“But sparsely populated?”

“As I remember, yes,” he had said, wondering both at her persistence and at her dissatisfied expression.

“She wants something from us,” Kostia commented later.

“Something to do with the places we've been,” said Tonia. “Or places you've been, Uncle Septemius, before we were born.”

So now he asked Stavia, “What is it you want, Medic? Is there a price for the medicine for old Bowough? Something you've a mind to trade?”

She shook her head. “I don't know at this moment, Septemius Bird. Perhaps. But, whatever I might want, I wouldn't like to say I'd trade the old man's life for it. More, I'd like you to think that if I do you a favor now—and not an inconsiderable one, either—you might do me one later on.”

“So?”

“We'll talk more on it again.” He could not pin her down. She was as slippery as one of those rare fishes that were showing up every now and then in the streams.
However, that evening she appeared with a syringe and gave old Bowough an injection which seemed, by morning, to have made his breathing easier.

W
HEREVER SHE HAPPENED
to be working during the day, Stavia took her breakfast and supper at home with her family, Morgot, Joshua, Corrig, and very occasionally Myra and her little boy. The toddler was usually enough distraction to keep Myra from being rude to the servitors or from recalling old injustices and dissatisfactions.

Tonight there was, however, a new source for annoyance.

“I don't see why it is that Stavia gets to do everything,” Myra complained, wiping applesauce from the little boy's chin. “As she does, Morgot. You do have two daughters, you know?”

“I did not nominate Stavia for the exploration team,” Morgot responded calmly. “The nomination came about largely because she is medically trained.”

“Surely they're not sending just people who are medically trained!”

“No, of course not. But they aren't sending any mothers of young children, either. They prefer young people, without children, trained in some useful field. There won't be a lot of people involved. The team going south will be only two people, one woman, one servitor, and a pack animal or two. It will have two purposes; finding botanical specimens and spying out the land south of there which we have reason to believe is occupied. We don't want a large team that might stir up a lot of attention or trouble, just a small one that can sneak along the hills and find out how far north the strangers come.”

“There are other teams!”

“Yes. Two middle-sized teams will go east and north, the eastern one to see whether the desolations there have shrunk any and the northern one to explore the limits of the ice. Those, too, will search for botanical or zoological specimens of interest. One quite sizable group will go westward by boat and then down the shore to see whether there is any sign of useful life. All will be strenuous trips, not something you would much enjoy, Myra.”

“I would simply enjoy getting out of the house and away from babies for a while!”

Morgot shook her head and remained silent. Myra had chosen to have three children, Marcus first, then baby Barten when Marcus was five, now this one. All suggestions that she might take the babies to the crèche for a few hours a day in order to focus on her education met with tears and stubborn incomprehension. “They're all boys! I'll only have them for a little while, Morgot! I want to spend all the time with them I can!” Only to exclaim in the next moment that she would lose her mind if she didn't get away from children! Motherhood had not changed Myra appreciably. Well, the second boy would be going to his warrior father within the month.

“Have you decided whether you will accept the nomination?” Morgot asked Stavia. “You've been very dilatory about making a decision.”

Stavia, who had already planned to go, who was considering breaking the ordinances once more but putting it off as long as possible, tried to avoid making a commitment just yet. “Thinking, Morgot. You said the trip might take as much as six months. That's a chunk out of my life right now.”

“It has compensations. My mother went on one, thirty years ago it would be. Her art was poetry, and she wrote some very good things afterward.”

“My art is drama, Morgot. What do you expect me to do? Do mimes about it?”

“No, I thought more about your science and your craft, quite frankly. They're short of medical attention at the sheep camp. And you have more information about botanical things than most of our candidates. Collecting plant specimens isn't exactly a mindless activity.”

Stavia fell silent, embarrassed. She hadn't even thought about it. “Hasn't a systematic collection been done?”

“No, only sporadic bits and pieces. A new grain crop or root crop could more than pay for your time. Or some new herb with therapeutic properties. Even some new garden flower would be welcome.”

“Well”—she fell silent, thinking—thinking, as it happened, about a good deal more than the periodic journey of exploration—“since you recommend it so highly, Morgot. If they will assign me to the southern exploration,
I'll go. After four years in close quarters in Abbyville, I'd rather not join any of the larger groups.”

“I
T'S AS
I
SAID
in my letter,” Chernon muttered through the hole in the wall. If she only knew what it had cost him to get that letter secretly delivered! “I've looked it up in the ordinances. There's nothing there about taking a leave of absence.”

“I know that's what you said in your letter,” said Stavia, patiently. “But there's nothing that says you can.” She shut her eyes, listening to his voice, summoning up the Chernon of ten, eleven years ago. He sounded different, looked different, but that boy was still there, inside somewhere.

“There's nothing that says I can't,” he persisted, unable to tell her about Michael's assurances. “If I just go, when I return I'll tell them I thought it was permitted. They'll yell at me. They might even discipline me, but they won't execute me for cowardice or anything because I'm not yet twenty-five. In a few months, I will be twenty-five; then it will be too late.”

Stavia shrugged, unobserved, torn between argument and good sense. She had read his eloquent letter over a dozen times with different responses each time, responses varying from anger to pain, from laughter to longing. He had begged her to go away with him, just for a time. Begged her for something to remember in later years, something to make his life seem worthwhile. “Why do you want to do this, Chernon? You chose to stay with the warriors. If you're not contented, you could still come back through the Women's Gate. Why this!”

“Because going off on a trip with you this way isn't dishonorable,” he said, half angrily. “They may call it foolish or wrongheaded or even childish, but they won't call it dishonorable.”

“It matters that much to you what they call it?”

He chose not to answer the question. “Stavia, you owe me this.” Another of Michael's ploys, perhaps it would work.

“I?”

“If you hadn't given me books, you wouldn't have started my mind boiling about things. I'm not satisfied with the only choice I had. I want to know more about life
than that. You got me started on this, and it's up to you to let me satisfy it honorably!”

She mumbled something he could not hear.

“What did you say?”

“I said, what makes you think this will satisfy it?”

“You have my word.”

She did not really believe his word. “Why drag me into it?”

Stung, Chernon said something that was almost the truth. He had seen Stavia on the wall with Beneda. She had been a pretty little girl when he had seen her last. Now she was a stunningly beautiful woman, and the thought of having her to himself stirred him in ways he had not known were possible. “Because I can't give you up. Because I can't forget you. Because I love you,” he cried. “The whole point is to be with you, Stavia. Isn't it? Isn't that what we both want?” In the instant he said it, he knew this is what he should have said all along.

She sat stunned. Was it what they both wanted? If he had asked that question years ago, before she left for the academy, she would have said yes. Yes, at once and without thinking about it. She had ached for him, longed for him. Even now, parts of her went all wet-crotched at his words. She could feel some inner part of her breaking loose, panting against the thick wall between them, ready to dig through it to him, some frantic bitch part with hard little tits and all four feet flailing. “Yes, I want to be with you, Chernon,” she said, being honest, almost appalled at the longing in her words. “At least part of me does. But I think I could wait until carnival.”

“No!” It was almost a shout. “Not carnival. Not orgy time, with everybody in the city falling in and out of bed with everyone else….”

She was angered at this. “I didn't say I intended to fall in and out of bed with anyone!”

“I don't mean that! I mean I don't want what I feel for you to be…” He reached for loftier words than those that first came to mind. “I don't want it to be part of some general… some ritual indulgence. I don't want us surrounded by a thousand drunken warriors and giggling women. I want it to be… something finer than that.” These were Michael's words, and Stephon's, cynically composed and now offered out of desperation.

“Simeles,” she said, her lips quirking, half amused.

“What?”

“Your warrior poet Simeles. Doesn't he have a song about being in paradise alone with the beloved?”

Silence. Then, “I don't care if it's paradise or not. But I do want it alone, with you. Without some assignation mistress tapping on the door saying time's up.”

She couldn't answer him. The observer Stavia was paralyzed, bitten by some viper of indecision, unable to say yes, no, perhaps later, let's think about it. She didn't want this conspiracy, this subterfuge. She felt herself standing aside, felt that other Stavia taking over. The actor. The actor who made it all seem so easy, right or wrong, so easy.

“All right,” she said, not letting herself feel anything except that this was Chernon, and that her heart turned over when he spoke to her. She had wakened in the night sometimes in Abbyville, dreaming of him. He was not merely another warrior, not one like Barten, not a loudmouthed braggart. He was Chernon. Beneda's own brother. He was in her marrow. She had tried exorcising him, and she couldn't.

“I'll be leaving shortly for an exploration trip to the south,” she told him. “I'll arrange for you to have transportation to a place well south of Emmaburg, and I'll meet you there. You'll have to cover your brand and shave off your beard—not that you've got much—and plait your hair like a servitor.”

Stubborn silence. “I don't want to….”

The actor Stavia could deal easily with this. “Chernon, it's that or nothing. I can't be seen wandering around with a warrior down there. You may not be seen, but if you are, so far as anyone knows you'll be a servitor named Brand from Agathaville. No one knows you, you don't know anyone. I'm the only team member from Marthatown, so there won't be any questions asked. Unless we're alone, you'll take orders from me, politely. You'll call me ma'am.”

“What about the real servitor, the one who was supposed to go with you?”

“I'll have to figure something out. Some way to send a message telling him not to come. You and I will do the exploration I would have done anyhow, then we'll return
separately. I'll come back to the town; you'll come back to the garrison. According to you, that will satisfy you.” Her voice gave no indication of the turmoil inside. She wondered at that, finding it inconceivable that she could sound so cool and feel so hot.

He had to agree to what she wanted. His visions of quest had always concluded with his return to the garrison, his return to honor and glory. That there was something unsatisfying about the plan Stavia laid forth, he perceived only dimly without in any way recognizing what it was. If he had been capable of analyzing it, he would have been astonished and shocked to find he did not really like the idea of returning.

“I'
VE BROUGHT MORE MEDICINE
for Bowough.” She was drinking tea in the room Septemius shared with old Bowough. “That's the favor I'm doing you. As for the favor you can do for me….”

“Yes,” he asked, interested, conscious of the quiet in the next room where Kostia and Tonia were hanging upon every word.

“I want you to travel south from here, as soon as Bowough is able to travel. Once you're a mile or so outside the city, someone will hail you by name and ask for a ride farther south. I hope you'll be sympathetic to that request.”