The Shattered Chain (40 page)

“Jaelle was dying,” Rohana said, “and her sworn sister had a right to remain with her. I can only imagine—” She frowned, trying to think it out. “Alida has the Ardais Gift; she is a catalyst telepath, and contact with her may have awakened latent
laran
in this woman. But if it had not been there, Alida could not have roused it. The man—Haldane—was there, too, and he showed no sign of being aware of what was going on. But whatever the reason, this woman has
laran,
and it means we must revise some of our preconceived notions about Terrans.” She said “our” preconceived notions, but she really meant “your”; Hastur knew it and scowled.

He said, “Here is the Terran official, and his interpreter.”

Rohana had met Montray before, and had not been impressed; she wondered if she had picked up some shred of Magda’s contempt for the man. This time he was accompanied by a young man who spoke
casta
as well as either Peter or Magda, which was as well as any native-born Darkovan. He introduced himself as Wade Montray, the coordinator’s son, and politely made himself known to each of them, while his father went toward Peter, glowering.

“So there you are, Haldane! Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused? And where is Miss Lorne? She should be here! In fact, both of you should have reported back to the HQ last night for orders!”

Peter said rather stiffly, “I have not been informed that any charges have been filed against us. It did not seem proper to give offense to the Lady Rohana when she invited us to remain as her guests. I am certain that Magda will be here at the proper time.” He turned toward the door, with an audible sigh of relief. “In fact, she is here. And the young woman with her was instrumental in saving my life, Montray, so you be polite to her, damn it!”

“Nice-looking girl,” Montray commented, and Peter stiffened up again. “Montray, you’ve been on Darkover how long—ten years? If you haven’t learned yet that it’s not proper to make comments about a woman’s looks, I suggest you put in for transfer as fast as you can, or never stick your head out of the Terran Zone!”

Magda had come into the room with Jaelle and three strange women, and was quietly seating herself with them on the fourth side of the room. Hastur said sternly, “Jaelle, what is this? I gave you no authority to invite any outsiders to this conference!”

“I did not ask for it, my Lord.” Jaelle spoke respectfully, but with none of the fear most outsiders displayed before a Comyn lord. “Lord Hastur, it seemed to me that our Guild is very deeply concerned in these matters that are under discussion this morning, and I therefore asked these representatives to come and state our position before you, and before the Terrans.”

Montray demanded, “What did she say?” and his son began quietly repeating Jaelle’s words, as Jaelle went on.

“My Lord, my Lady and respected off-worlders,” she added, turning to the Terrans. “I wish to present to you
mestra
Millea n’ha Camilla, Guild-mother of Thendara House.” Millea was a tall and bulky woman, conventionally dressed, and as feminine as Rohana herself,
“Mestra
Lauria n’ Andrea, the head of the Independent Council of Craftswomen, and
Domna
Fiona n’ha Gorsali, Judge of the City Court of Arbitration.”

Rohana thought, admiringly,
Oh, Jaelle, you are far more clever than I ever believed!
The women seating themselves in a dignified row across the room were no ordinary Amazons; they were three of the most powerful women in the city of Thendara. The Guild of Craftswomen had successfully fought for the right to be recognized among the city’s businesses;
Domna
Fiona was the first woman ever to be appointed a judge in the history of Thendara. Hastur could not dismiss them as unimportant.

Jaelle said, “Will you grant us the right to hear your deliberations, nobles?”

Hastur looked a trifle annoyed, but nothing could ruffle his long discipline in diplomacy. He rose and bowed politely to the three women. “I will not welcome you to this Council, for you came uninvited,” he said, “but this is no secret conclave to work tyrannies; no concerned citizen may be denied the right to hear, and in turn, be heard.”

Montray said, his son translating, “We welcome the chance to be heard by any citizens of Thendara. Be welcome, ladies.”

Hastur addressed himself to Montray. He said, “When you were last before us, we granted permission for your employee, Magdalen Lorne”—Magda, seated among the Amazons, noticed that he did not hesitate or stumble even slightly over her Terran name—”to venture into the hills and negotiate for the rescue of your employee, the man Haldane, held captive at Sain Scarp. As I now understand the matter, the Lorne woman encountered a band of Free Amazons under the command of Jaelle n’ha Melora, and was required, according to their custom and the laws of their Charter, to swear an oath of allegiance to their Guild. Is this an accurate account of the affair?”

The Guild-mother Millea said, “According to the reports we have had from our sisters, this is true.”

Hastur said, “I do not quite understand the difficulty. It seems to me that this is a matter for private agreement among the parties concerned, or at least for the courts of arbitration.”

Montray listened with an angry frown; he said something, and his son shook his head, refusing to translate it.

Hastur turned to Magda and said, “Miss Lorne, did you have these women brought here that you might petition, in the presence of all concerned, to be released from your oath?”

Magda’s voice was low, but very clear. She said, “No, my Lord Hastur. I am willing to abide by the oath I swore, and to honor it till death. But I am not certain that the Terran authorities will allow me to do so. They may possibly hold that my oath is not valid, or that because of prior loyalties I had no right to swear it.”

Montray said something again, and the young translator said, just audibly, “I told you so.”

Rohana, watching, realized that Magda had done an exceptionally clever thing. In private, the Terran ambassador might state that he did not believe in the validity of a Darkovan oath. But if he said so, in the presence of Hastur and three Guild-mothers from Thendara, he destroyed the credibility of every Terran on Darkover for decades to come. And if he didn’t know it, and judging by his expression he hadn’t, he was finding it out in no uncertain terms, both from the young and expert translator, and from Peter Haldane! From the look of frustration on his face, Rohana could tell, even without need for a scrap of
laran,
that he was consigning all of them, especially Magda, to whatever his Terran equivalent was for the coldest of Zandru’s hells!

Domna
Fiona said, “The noble guest from Terra appears to find some difficulty in accepting the decision; may we hear it, with Lord Hastur’s permission?”

Montray said, waiting for his son to translate, “The difficulty is this: Miss Lorne is extremely valuable to us. She is the only woman qualified to act as an expert on the Darkovan languages, and to advise us on women’s customs and the laws governing social usage on Darkover. It seems to us that we cannot, for the moment, spare her to any other work, valuable as it may be, and highly as we may respect those who would welcome her among them.”

Rohana knew perfectly well that the polite phrases had been added by the translator, and suspected that Montray’s original had been more emphatic and much less courteous. She did not understand enough of the Terran language to be sure.

“If that is the only difficulty, it can easily be settled,”
domna
Fiona said. From the voice, and something about the narrow body in the judicial robes, Rohana suspected the woman was an
emmasca;
but the robes were too bulky to be sure. “If your problem is a lack of adequate experts on women’s customs and the languages, then I think we can offer assistance. Sister,” and she turned to Jaelle, who stood up nervously.

Her eyes met Peter’s briefly across the room. Jaelle said, “Say to the Terran official that if it is agreeable to your people, I will offer myself to take my sister’s place in working for you. I speak both
casta
and
cahuenga
fluently, and I can read and write in these and in the language of the Dry Towns; and I think I can help you to fill in what gaps there are in your knowledge of the customs of Thendara. And I think there are others of my sisters who would be willing to do the same, to the limits of your needs. We have been told”—again, briefly, she met Peter’s eyes—”that you Terrans have had trouble in finding workers for anything but simple manual labor, and that you have sought for them without success.”

Montray said, “That would indeed be welcome.” He bowed politely to Jaelle. “But we had heard it was the will of Hastur that the people of Thendara should not give us this kind of assistance.”

The Amazon Lauria, head of the Guild of Craftswomen, said quietly, “The Lord Hastur speaks for the Comyn, and for their sworn followers and those who owe allegiance in the Domains. But the will, or the whim, of Hastur is not yet the law of this land. With all respect, Lord Hastur”—and she made a deep bow to the Comyn lord—”we do not accept the right of Comyn to lay commands upon the free women of Thendara as to what lawful work they may accept, or what their relations shall be with the men of the Empire from the stars … or with their women. By the will of Hastur, the only women who have been permitted to know the men of the Empire are the women in the bars and brothels near the spaceport. We do not believe this will give a true picture of our world to the men of the
Terranan.
So we have come here today to offer you our lawful services in fields more suitable for meaningful communication between our two worlds: as map-makers, guides, translators or any suitable work at which the Terrans wish to employ Darkovan workers and experts. And in return, knowing that you of the Empire may have much to teach us, we ask that a group of our young women be placed as apprentices among your medical services and other scientific branches of your knowledge to allow us to learn from you. Is that agreeable to you, messire of Terra?”

Of course it was agreeable, thought Magda, watching Montray’s face; it was what they had hoped for from the beginning, what they had so obdurately been denied on Darkover. She had never realized—and blamed herself for her own insensitivity—that the women of Darkover would resent being judged, by the Terrans, only by the women their men met in the bars and brothels. She herself, with her knowledge of such respectable women as she could meet in the markets and public places of Thendara, had gone a little deeper—but not much.

It wasn’t, of course, total cooperation. There weren’t that many Free Amazons, and they were rarely in positions of such power as
domna
Fiona. (It was also the first she had heard of the Courts of Arbitration.
What a lot I have to learn,
she thought,
and what fun I’m going to have learning it!)

And afterward she would work again for the Terrans, and be one of the first to come and go between the two worlds, helping them to find a way to one another. Two worlds: and she would belong to both! She looked across at Lady Rohana, and the lady smiled. Again Magda had the image of a great door swinging wide, both ways, an opened door between locked-away worlds. …

Jaelle was watching Lorill Hastur. He seemed not very pleased, but he capitulated with such good grace as he could.
The fact is, the Free Amazons just aren’t important enough
—
or so Hastur thinks
—
that he can, with dignity, take any notice of what we do. But where we go, others will follow, for their own reasons. She
caught Peter’s eyes across the room, and smiled; and it seemed that her heart stopped at his returning smile.

I have found an honorable way we can be together in his world!

Montray was answering Hastur’s gracious words with a little speech about friendship and brotherhood, carefully using all the wrong inflections while his son Wade carefully straightened them out and made them into the proper ones.

How will Montray get along without me to write his speeches?
Magda realized, lightheartedly, that she didn’t give a damn. She had more interesting things to do.