Glory Season

That proved easier said than done. There were many sails in Port Sanger, from hand-carved, hard-edged windwings, to stormjammers, to clippers with flapping sheets of woven squid-silk. At the diplomatic docks, just below the harbor fort, there was even one rare, sleek cruiser whose banks of gleaming solar panels basked in the angled sunshine. Maia and Leie did not bother with such rich craft, whose crews would have spurned their paltry coinsticks as fishing lures. They did try their luck with well-turned freighters flying banners of the Cloud Whale League, or the Blue Heron Society, voyager guilds whose gray-bearded commodores sometimes called at Lamatia Hall to interview bright boys for lives at sea.

According to children's fables, once upon a time boys like Albert simply joined the guilds of their fathers. Even summer girls used to grow up knowing which daddy-ship would take them someday, free of charge, to wherever opportunities shone brightest for young vars.

Clone-child you must stay within,

Home-hive to protect, renew.

Var-child you must strive and win,

Half-mom and half-man, it's true.

Let the heartwinds blow away,

Winter's frost, or summer's bright.

Name the special things that stay,

Fixed, to guide you through the night.

Stratos Mother, Founders' Gifts,

Your own skill and eager hands.

One more boon, the lucky lifts,

Father ticket to far lands.

One old teacher, Savant Judeth — a Lamai with unusual sympathy for her summerling charges — once testified that truth underlaid the old tales. "In those days, each sailing society kept close contact with one house in Port Sanger, carrying clan cargoes and finding welcome in clan hostels, summer and winter both. When var girls turned five, their fathers — or their fathers' compeers — used to carry them off as treasures in their own right, helping them get settled in lands far away."

To Maia it had sounded like romantic drivel, much too sappy to be true. But Leie had asked, "Why'd it stop being so?"

Momentarily wistful, Savant Judeth looked anything but typical for a stern-browed Lamai.

"Wish I knew, seedling. It may have to do with the rise in summer births. There seemed a lot when I was young. Now it's up to one in four. So many vars." The old woman shook her head. "And rivalry among the clans and guilds has grown fierce; there's even outright fighting . . ." Judeth had sighed. "All I can say is, we used to know which men would lodge here, to spark clones during cooltime and sire sons during the brief hot. Oh, and beget you summer girls, as well. But those days are gone."

Hesitantly, Leie had asked if Judeth knew their father.

"Clevin? Oh, yes. I can even see him in your faces. Navigator on the Sea Lion he was. A good egg, as men go. Your womb mother, Lysos keep her, would favor none other. You got to know men in those days. Pleasant it was, in a strange way."

And hard to imagine. Whether as noisy creatures who sheltered in the getta during summer, slaking their rut in houses of ease, or as taciturn guests during the cool seasons, lounging like cats while the Lamai sisters coaxed them with wine and plays and games of Chess or Life, either way, they were soon off again. Their names vanished, even if they left their seed. Yet, for one entire year after hearing Savant Judeth's tale, Maia used to search among the masts for the Sea Lion's banner, imagining the expression on her father's sunburnt face when he laid eyes upon the two of them. Then she learned, Pinniped Guild no longer sailed the Parthenia Sea. The var daughters its men had sired, five long cycles ago, were on their own.

None of the better ships in harbor had berths for them. Most were already overloaded with uniques — hard-eyed var women who glared down at the twins or laughed at their plaintive entreaties. Captains and pursers kept shaking their heads, or asking for more money than the sisters could afford.

And there was something else. Something Maia couldn't pin down. Nobody said anything aloud, but the mood in the harbor seemed . . . jumpy.

Maia tried to dismiss it as a reflection of her own nerves.

Working their way along the docks, the twins found nothing suitable departing in under a fortnight. Finally, exhausted, they arrived on the left bank of the river Slopes, where tugs and hemp barges tied up at sagging wharves owned by local clans that had fallen on ill fortune or simply did not care anymore. Dejected, Leie voted for going back to town and booking a room. Surely this string of bad luck was an omen. In ten days, maybe twenty, things could change.

Maia wouldn't hear of it. Where Leie fluxed from wrath to smoldering despair, Maia tended toward a doggedness that settled into pure obstinacy. Twenty days in a hotel? When they could be on their way to some exotic land? Somewhere they might have a chance to use their secret plan?

It was in a grimy hostelry of the lowly Bizmish Clan that they met the captains of a pair of colliers heading south on the morrow tide.