The Saga of the Renunciates (37 page)

Light feathers of snow were falling overhead; but toward the east there was a break in the clouds where the dull reddish light of Cottman IV—the sun of Darkover, called the Bloody Sun by the Terran Empire—could be seen dimly through cloud, like a great bloodshot eye.

Magdalen Lorne shivered a little as she walked slowly up the approach to the Terran HQ. She was in Darkovan dress, so she had to show her indent cards to the Spaceforce people at the gates; but one of them knew her by sight.

“It’s all right, Miss Lorne. You’ll have to go over to the new building, though.”

“They finally finished the new quarters for Intelligence?”

The uniformed man nodded.

“That’s right. And the new Chief came in from Alpha Centaurus the other day—have you met her yet?”

This was news to Magda. Darkover was a Closed Planet, Class B, which meant Terrans were—officially, at least—restricted to certain Treaty Zones and Trade Cities. There was no official Intelligence Service, except for a small office in Records and Communications, working directly out of the Coordinator’s office.

It’s about time they opened a branch of Intelligence here. They could do with a Department of Alien Anthropology, too
. Then Magda wondered what it would mean to her own somewhat irregular status. She had been born on Darkover, in Caer Donn, where the Terrans had built their first spaceport before shifting to the new Empire Headquarters here in Thendara. She had been reared among Darkovans, before the new policy of standardization of Spaceport buildings to Empire-normal yellow lights—a policy making little or no provision for the red sun of Darkover and the fierce cold of the climate. This, of course, made sense for Empire personnel stationed on ordinary Empire planets, who seldom stayed in one post more than a year or so and did not need to acclimatize themselves; but conditions on Darkover were, to say the least, unusual for an Empire planet.

Magda’s parents had been linguists who had spent much of their lives in Caer Donn; she had grown up more Darkovan than Terran, one of only three or four people who spoke the language like a native and were capable of doing undercover research into customs and language. She had never been away from Darkover except for three years of schooling in the Empire’s Intelligence School on Alpha Colony; then she had accepted a position in Communications as a matter of course. But what had been, to her superiors, only convenient disguise, fitting her for research and undercover work on the planet of her birth, had become to Magda her deepest self.

And it is to that Darkovan self, Margali, not Magda, that I must now be true. And not just Margali, but Margali n’ha Ysabet. Renunciate of the Comhi-Letzii, what the Terrans would call Free Amazon. That is what I am now and must be henceforth
, men dia pre’zhiuro… Magda whispered to herself the first words of the Renunciate’s Oath, and shivered. It would not be easy. But as she had sworn, so would she do. To a Terran, an oath given under duress was not binding.
Darkovan, the Oath binds me without question, the very thought of escaping it dishonorable
.

She wrenched her thoughts from that endless loop in her mind.
A new section for Intelligence
, he had said,
and a new Chief
. Probably, Magda thought with a resigned shrug, someone who knew considerably less about the job than she did herself. She, and her ex-husband, Peter Haldane, had both been born here, were naturally bilingual, knew and accepted the customs as their own. But that was not the way the Empire did things.

The new Intelligence Office was in a tall skyscraper, still shining with newness, high above the Port. By the Terra-normal yellow lights, too bright for Magda’s eyes, she saw a woman standing; a woman she knew, or had once known, very well.

Cholayna Ares was taller than Magda, brown-skinned, with white hair—Magda had never known whether it was prematurely grayed or whether it had always been naturally silver-white, for her face was, and had always been, unusually young. She smiled and reached out in a welcoming gesture, and Magda took her old teacher’s hand.

“It’s hard to imagine you’d give up the Training School,” Magda said “Certainly not to come here—”

“Oh, I didn’t exactly give it up.” Cholayna Ares laughed. “There was the usual sort of bureaucratic hassle—each group tried to get me on their side, and I said a plague on both their houses, and put in for transfer. So I wound up—here. Not a popular post, so no competition for getting it. I remembered that you came from here, and you liked it. Not many people have a chance of building the Intelligence Service up out of nothing on a Class B planet. And with you and Peter Haldane—didn’t I hear once that you’d married him?”

“The marriage broke up last year,” Magda said. “The usual sort of thing.” She warded her former teacher’s look of curious sympathy away with a hard shrug. “The only problem it created was that they didn’t send us out in the field together any more.”

“If there was no Intelligence Service here, what were you doing in the field?”

“We worked out of Communications,” Magda said. “Language research; at one time they had me recording jokes and idioms from the marketplace, just a way of keeping up with language and current slang, so people who
did
have to go into the field wouldn’t make stupid mistakes.”

“And so, my first day on the job, you come up to greet me and make me feel welcome?” Cholayna asked. “Sit down—tell me all about this place. It’s kind of you, Magda. I always knew you’d make a good career in Intelligence.”

Magda lowered her eyes. “That wasn’t the idea—I hadn’t been told you were here.” She decided the only way to get it said was to say it. “I came here to resign.”

Cholayna’s dark eyes showed the dismay she felt.

“Magda! You and I both know what the Service is like! Certainly they should have offered you this job, but I always thought we were friends, and that you’d be willing to stay on for a while, at least!”

Magda had never thought of that. But of course it was the impression Cholayna would get. She wished the new Head had been a complete stranger, or at least someone she disliked, not a woman she had always liked and respected.

“Oh, no, Cholayna! I give you my word, it has nothing to do with you! I didn’t even know you were here, I was in the field till last night—‘’ She found she was stammering in her eagerness to convince Cholayna of the truth. Cholayna frowned and gestured her to sit down.

“I think you’d better tell me all about it, Magda.”

Uneasily, Magda sat down. “‘You weren’t at the Council this morning. You didn’t know. While I was in the field—I took the Oath of a Renunciate.” At the bewildered look on her colleague’s face she elaborated. “In the files they’re called Free Amazons; they don’t like the name. I am bound to spend half a year in the Guild House in Thendara for training, and after that—after that, I’m not sure what I intend to do, but I don’t think it will be Intelligence.

“But what a wonderful opportunity, Magda,” Cholayna said. “I wouldn’t think of accepting your resignation! I’ll put you on inactive status, if you like, for the half year, but think of the thesis you can get out of this! Your work is already regarded as the standard of excellence, you know—I did hear that much from the Legate,” she added. “You probably know more about Darkovan customs than anyone working here. I also heard that the Medic division has agreed to train a group of Free Amazons— she saw Magda’s slight wince and amended—”What was it you called them—Renunciates? Sounds like an order of nuns, what do they renounce? Sounds like a strange place for you.“

Magda smiled at the comparison. “I could quote the Oath for you. Mostly what they—we—renounce are the protections for women in the society, in exchange for certain freedoms.” Even to her, it sounded like a woefully inadequate explanation, but how could she explain? “But I’m not doing this to write a thesis, you know, or to provide more information for Terran Intelligence. That’s why I came to turn in my resignation.”

“And that’s why I’ll refuse to accept it,” said Cholayna.

“Do you think I am going to spy on my friends in the Guild House? Never!”

“I’m sorry you see it that way, Magda, I don’t. The more we know about the different groups on any planet, the easier it is for us—and the easier it is for the planet we’re on, because there’s less chance of misunderstandings and trouble between the Empire and the locals—”

“Yes, yes, I learned all that in the Intelligence School,” Magda said impatiently. “Standard party line, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.” There was something like carefully controlled anger in the older woman’s voice.

“But I would, and I’m beginning to see how it can be misused,” Magda said, and now she too was angry. “If you won’t accept my resignation, Cholayna, I’ll have to leave without it. Darkover is my home. And if the price of becoming a Renunciate is to give up my Empire citizenship, why, then—

“Wait just a minute, Magda—please?” Cholayna held up her hand to interrupt the angry torrent of words. “And sit down again, won’t you?” Magda realized that she had started to her feet; slowly she sank down again in the chair. Cholayna went to the console on the office wall and dialled herself a cup of coffee; brought another to Magda, balancing the hot cups in her palm, and sank down to a chair beside her.

“Magda, forget for a minute that I’m your superior officer won’t you? I always thought we were friends. I didn’t expect you’d walk away without any explanation at all.”

I thought we were friends, too
, Magda thought, sipping at the coffee.
But I know now I have never had any woman friends at all; I didn’t know what friendship was. I was always trying so hard to be one of the boys that I never paid any attention to what other women did, or didn’t do. Until I met Jaelle, and knew what it was to have a friend I’d fight for and die for if I must. Cholayna isn’t my friend either, she’s my superior and she’s using friendship to make me do what she wants. Maybe she thinks that is being my friend, it’s a Terran way of thinking. I’m just not one of them anymore. If I ever was
.

“Why don’t you you tell me the whole thing, Magda?” The kindly look in Cholayna’s eyes Magda was confused again.
Maybe she really thinks of herself as my friend
.

She began at the beginning, telling Cholayna how Peter Haldane, her friend and partner, and for a time her husband, had been kidnapped by bandits who had mistaken him for Kyril Ardais, son of the Lady Rohana Ardais. Fearing to travel alone as a woman, Magda had been persuaded by Lady Rohana to disguise herself as a Free Amazon. When she had later encountered a band of genuine Renunciates, led by Jaelle n’ha Melora, the deception had been discovered.

“The penalty for a man who invaded them in women’s clothes would have been death or castration,” Magda explained. “For a woman, the penalty is only that the lie must become truth; a woman may not enjoy the freedoms of the Oath without first renouncing the safety and protection of the laws specially protecting women.”

“An oath taken under duress—” Cholayna began but Magda shook her head.

“No. I was given free choice. They offered to escort me to a Guild House where one of the Elders would decide the special circumstances—whether I could simply be sworn to secrecy and released.” She sighed, wearily wondering if it had been worth it. “That would have lost too much time; Peter was to be executed at Midwinter if not ransomed. I chose, quite freely, to take the Oath; but I took it with a lot of—of mental reservations. I felt just as you do now. Only between then and now I—I changed my mind.”

She knew that sounded ridiculously inadequate. She went on, telling only a little of the cruel conflict in her mind, when she had intended to escape, leave her Oath, even if she must kill Jaelle, or leave her to be slaughtered by bandits; and how she had found herself fighting at the woman’s side, saving her life…

Cholayna listened to the story in silence, rising once to refill the coffee cups. Finally she said, “I can understand, to some extent, why you feel obligated.”

“It’s not only that,” Magda said. “The Oath has become very real to me. I feel myself a Renunciate at heart—I think I would always have been one, had I known such a choice existed. Now—” How could she explain it? She drained the cold coffee from the cup and concluded helplessly, “It is something I
must
do.”

Cholayna nodded. “I can see that. I don’t know if there is a precedent. I’ve heard of men going over the wall, going native, on some of the Empire planets. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a woman doing that, though.”

“I’m not exactly
going over the wall
,” Magda pointed out.“If I were, would I be here in your office, formally turning in my resignation?”

“Which I do not intend to accept,” Cholayna said. “No, listen to me—I listened to you, didn’t I? There’s no precedent for this; I don’t think there’s any way to give up Empire citizenship for a sworn-in civil servant, and you made that choice when you accepted three years training in the Intelligence School—”

“I’ve done enough work to repay the Empire—”

Cholayna silenced her with a gesture. “Nobody questions that, Magda. I am perfectly willing to put you on inactive status, if you must have your six months—half year—how long is the Darkovan year anyhow? But something has come up which ties in very well with what you have told me.”

She turned to her desk and took up a file of printouts.

“As it happens, I have a transcript of that Council here,” she said, and Magda glanced at the printouts—the Council where Lord Hastur had been forced to accept the validity of a Terran’s Oath and where the Guild Mothers had arranged that the Terrans should engage the services of the Renunciate Jaelle n’ha Melora to work in Magda’s place in the Terran Headquarters, prior to the employment of a dozen Free Amazons. “—Oh, very well, Renunciates,” Cholayna amended quickly, “to be trained in medical technology by our Medic Department, and possibly in other sciences and skills. With Jaelle working among us, and you in the Guild House, it seems to me that during this half year you will be especially qualified to determine personnel practices for Darkovan employees in the Empire, especially among women. We are prepared to put you on detached duty. Living among Darkovan women, you can find out which women could handle the culture shock of living among Terrans, as well as letting us know how we ought to treat them for the best communication between Terrans and Darkovans. You are the only person who is qualified to do this, actually living in a Guild House.”