Thendara House (34 page)

Magda felt the kiss and for a moment it blended into the magical way in which she had shared Jaelle’s thoughts in the dream. Then, shocked and shaking, she pulled away. What had this place done to her? She felt weak and drained and the early snow-reflected light at the window sent knives through her head. Jaelle looked up at her and the laughter died in concern. “It’s all right, Margali,” she said in a whisper. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, you’re here with me,
bredhya
.” She tried to pull Magda down again into the comfort of her arms. But Magda pulled free, stumbling, her dressing robe dragging on the floor behind her. The floor felt unsteady, bulging and rippling under her feet, and when she got into the bath and splashed her face with icy water it seemed to burn her skin without clearing her vision or cooling her fever.

Irmelin was there under the icy shower; the very sight made Magda shiver. She looked surprised to see Magda.

“Awake so early? You are not on kitchen duty, are you? Or helping Rezi with the milking?” She moved aside, and said, “I’m finished here,” and picked up her towel. She stopped a moment, concerned, watching Magda clinging to the basin. “Are you ill, Margali?”

Magda thought, Yes, something is wrong with me, but she only shook her head.

“There is blood on your nightgown,” said the plump, smiling woman. “If you take out the stain now with cold water, you will be doing a kindness to the women who are working in the laundry this moon.”

“Blood?” Magda was still in a stupor of horror from the dream; she started to say,
but I’m not even pregnant
. She caught herself - how foolish! She bent to look; it was true. The heavy nightgown was spotted with blood.

Well, that explained part of the dream, anyhow; explicitly sexual dreams had always heralded the onset of her menstruation. The treatment she had been given in the Terran zone, to suppress the cycles of ovulation, must have worn off. She had not been expecting it. Peter had always laughed at the sexual dreams she had at that time, saying that if she had been equally passionate earlier in her cycle, he might have been able to make her pregnant - she cut the thought off, angry at herself for remembering. She went to the cupboard where supplies were kept, and Irmelin, watching her, said, “You really do look unwell, Margali. If I were you I would ask Marisela for some of the herb medicines she keeps for such things, and then go back to bed and try to sleep.”

She did not want to disturb Marisela’s rest, but it was a temptation; to go back to bed, to huddle there and complain of sickness, to put it all aside. And the thing which made her feel sickest was that she wanted nothing more than to go back to Jaelle, let the woman comfort her, find the same kind of rapport she had had with Keitha after the fight, when Marisela’s drug had worn down her defenses, and this time follow it as far as it would lead. But she could not face Jaelle, she could not face anyone with this thing, whatever it was; she was helpless, unprotected… she felt entangled, enmeshed in conflicting loyalties like spiderwebs. Her hands shook as she washed out her nightgown.

I am jealous of Jaelle. Not because she has Peter, but because Peter has her, now… he accused me of this once and I would not believe it
.

She went back to the room, hurrying into her clothes. Jaelle sat up and watched her, troubled.

“Oath-daughter,” she said. “What have I done? What are you worrying about? Did you think - ” and she stopped, not able to follow Magda’s troubled thoughts; the erratic
laran
she could never command had deserted her again, and she did not know what Magda was worrying about, she only knew the other woman was desperately troubled, and could not imagine why. Why would Magda not accept her comfort? Magda put on her shoes and clattered down the stairs, running; when Jaelle followed, some time later, Magda was neither at breakfast in the dining room, nor anywhere else in the house, and when she asked if anyone had seen her, Rafaella said, puzzled, that Margali had volunteered to help with the milking in the barn.

And suddenly Jaelle was angry.
If she would rather do hard work in the barn than face me and have this out together, so be it
. She sat down by Rafaella and dipped up a dish of porridge, flooding it with milk and shaking her head when Rafi passed her the honey jar.

“Very well,” she said. “Let’s talk about the business, for I should be back at the Headquarters by the third hour after sunrise.”

CHAPTER THREE

Jaelle was sure, now, that she was pregnant, though there was as yet no trace of the early-morning sickness. And that brought back a memory from the Guild House, years ago. It had been before Kindra died. Marisela had said, in one of the first midwives’ lectures Jaelle had been allowed to attend after her body had matured, that morning sickness was at least in part because the body and mind were in disagreement; one or the other, mind or body, rejecting the child when the other wished for it. And she would not have been surprised if this sickness had come in her confusion.

She had not yet told Peter. Part of her confused mind wondered if she was being spiteful. He wanted a son so very much. Did she take malicious pleasure in denying him the knowledge that would mean so much to him? No, she was sure it was not that.

In my heart what I want is for him to know without being told. To read it in my heart and mind as even Kyril, much as I despise him, would know
. And this made her guilty again, that she so much wanted - no,
needed
- Peter to be what he was not. Yet she had rejected, with so much determination, her Comyn heritage. Rejected it again and again, the first time when, as a child, she had asked for fostering in the Amazon house rather than remaining with Rohana; Rohana had loved her mother and would have gladly fostered Melora’s daughter. She had rejected it again, when at fifteen she had chosen to take the Oath rather than to honor the training of a Comyn daughter, to be trained in
laran
in a Tower, and then to marry a Comyn son as they decreed. They had not wanted her to renounce her heritage. She stood too near the head of the Aillard Domain - Jaelle was not sure how near, she had not wanted to know.

The Oath was specific; bear no child for any man’s house or heritage, clan or inheritance, pride or posterity
. As she had asked in the Guild House: how did she know whether she wanted a child for herself, or because Peter so much wanted it? And what of a woman’s heritage? Did she not wish to bear a daughter for the Guild House, or for her mother’s inheritance?

And why should she think so much about it now? Since she was already pregnant, there was not very much she could do about it. She had deliberately neglected the contraceptive precautions that the Terran Medics had carefully explained to her. A child had chosen her, even if she had not really chosen the child.

Yet, when she walked that morning into Cholayna’s office, it struck her that she would very much like to confide in Cholayna.

Yet - confide in a stranger, when she had not even told the father of her child? Was this only the habit of turning to another woman for comfort or validation? She remembered that she had sought reassurance, almost permission, of Magda, before she shared Peter’s bed, and had rationalized it by telling herself that she wished to be sure her friend would not feel jealous, because Peter had once been Magda’s husband.

But Cholayna was her employer, not her friend or oath-sister!

“Jaelle,” Cholayna said, “I am to talk this morning with one of the Renunciates, a - Guild Mother?” She hesitated, stumbling a little, on the title. “Her name is Lauria n’ha Andrea - did I pronounce that right? And I want you present as interpreter.”

“It will be my pleasure,” Jaelle said formally, thinking that Mother Lauria had lost no time. “But you speak the language so well I do not think you truly need an interpreter.”

Cholayna said with her quick smile, “I may pronounce the words properly, but I need someone to be sure I use all of them properly. Do you know what I mean by
semantics
? Not the meaning of the words, but the meaning of the meanings and the way different people use the same words to mean different things.”

Jaelle repeated that she would be honored, and Cholayna started to speak into her communicator. “Ask the Darkovan lady - ” and stopped herself. “No, wait. Jaelle, would you be kind enough to escort her into my office yourself? She is known to you.”

Jaelle went to obey, thinking that Cholayna had an intuitive grasp of the right gesture, the personal touch, which would make her invaluable in dealing with Darkovans. Russell Montray did not have that intuitive sense. Yet Peter would have had it, or Magda, and she thought Monty would know, or be capable of learning it. And it was her personal responsibility to be sure that Alessandro Li learned it.

Mother Lauria was in the waiting room, her hands composedly clasped in her lap, her clear blue eyes moving around the room, studying every detail.

“What a pleasant place to work, Jaelle, though I suppose the yellow lights must be a little difficult to tolerate at first.” As they went into the inner office, she asked, “Is it proper courtesy to bow to your employer, as we would do to one of our own, or to clasp her hand, as Camilla has told me the Terrans do in greeting?”

Jaelle smiled, for Cholayna had asked her the same sort of question. “For the moment, a bow will do,” she said. “She is well trained in our courtesy and knows that we do not offer our hand unless it is a sincere offer of friendship.”

But as the two women bowed to one another, Jaelle suspected that beyond the courtesy there was, at once, a sincere liking for one another, tempered with mutual respect, as Cholayna welcomed Mother Lauria, urging her to a comfortable seat, offering her refreshment. “Can I offer you fruit juice or coffee?”

“I would like to try your Terran coffee; I have smelled it in the Trade City,” said Mother Lauria, and as Cholayna dialled her a cup from the refreshment console, sniffed the cup appreciatively. “Thank you. An interesting mechanism; I would like to know how this arrived here. I still remember, when I was told that messages came over wires, looking up to watch for the papers to come swinging along the wire. It was not till much later that I realized that what traveled over the wire were electrical pulses. And yet the idea was logical to me at that time, though I know better now.” She took a sip of the coffee, and Cholayna briefly explained the refreshment console, that the essence of the drink was kept in stock there and immediately mixed and reconstituted with hot or cold water as the computerized combination required.

Mother Lauria nodded, understanding. “And the yellow lights, they are normal for your home star?”

“For the majority of the suns in the Empire,” Cholayna qualified. “It is rare for a sun to have as much red and orange light as the sun of your world, and many of the people who work here will not be here long enough to make it worth the trouble of adapting to a different light pattern. But if it is more comfortable for you, I can adjust the lights here to what you would consider normal.” She touched a control, and the lights dimmed to a familiar reddish color. At Jaelle’s look of surprise, she smiled.

“It’s new; I had it done just the other day. It could have been installed all over the HQ if anyone had had the imagination to think of it. It occurred to me that if we are to have Darkovan women working in Medic, some compromise will have to be made between what is comfortable for natives to this planet, and career employees accustomed to a brighter sun. I, for instance, come from one of the more brilliant worlds, and I can hardly see in this light, so I must have a work area tasklighted for my own eyes. But this is restful when I am not reading.” She added, “I imagine that your eyesight is comparatively much better. On the contrary, I suppose you have less tolerance to ultraviolet - if you had sun reflecting off snow, for instance, you would need to be much more careful to guard against snowblindness.”

“I have heard women who travel in the Hellers say that this is a problem for them,” Mother Lauria confirmed, “and I am sure you know that one of the major items of Terran trade here is sunglasses.”

“While I can tolerate desert sunlight on my own world without any kind of eye protection,” Cholayna said, smiling, “and people from dimmer suns must safeguard themselves very carefully against sunburn or retinal burns; Magda told me that in her first week on Alpha she was nearly blinded. I have noticed that the normal lights in here are difficult for Jaelle to tolerate.”

“I did not think you had noticed,” Jaelle confessed. “I have tried not to show discomfort.”

“But that is foolish,” Cholayna said. “Your eyesight is valuable to us. There is no reason your quarters should not be wired for red light - Peter too was brought up on Darkover and would appreciate it, I am certain. It is only necessary to speak to the technicians. My own skin tones, too, are an adaptation by my people to a more brilliant sun,” she added.