Glory Season

The walled temple grounds were unprepossessing. The chapel bore proper symbols for venerating Stratos Mother and the Founders in the standard way, yet Maia suspected all wasn't orthodox. Vigilant guards, arrayed in leather, patrolled the palisade. Within, the expected air of cultivated serenity was overlaid by a veneer of static tension.

Except for Naroin and her younger sibling, none of the women looked alike.

After passing the chapel, the lugars bearing Maia's palanquin approached an unassuming wooden house, detached from the main compound, surrounded by a covered plank veranda. The doctor who had treated Maia aboard the Gentilleschi conferred with two women, one tall and severe-looking, dressed in priestly habits, the other rotund, wearing archdeaconess robes. Naroin, who had walked alongside during the brief journey from the riverside quay, took a quick lope around the house, satisfying herself of its security, while Hullin briskly looked inside. Upon reuniting near the porch, the pair exchanged efficient nods.

With the help of a nurse-nun, Maia stepped down, bearing stoically the profound pain spreading from her knee and side. They assisted her up a short ramp into the house, pausing at the entrance when the tall, elderly priestess bent to meet Maia's eye.

"You will be at peace here, child. Until you choose to leave, this will be your home."

The round woman wearing deacon's robes blew a sigh, as if she did not approve of promises that might prove hard to keep. Despite pain and fatigue, Maia felt she had learned more than they intended. "Thank you," she said hoarsely, and let the nurses guide her down a veranda of polished wood into a room featuring sliding doors made of paper-thin wood panels, overlooking a garden and a small pond. The mat bed featured sheets that looked whiter than a cloud. Maia never remembered being helped to slip between them. The sounds of plinking water, and wind rustling boughs, lulled her to sleep.

She awoke to find, next to her bed, the slim volumes given her by the Pinnipeds, plus a small box and a folded slip of paper. Maia opened the note.

I’ll be gone a while, varling, it read. I'm leaving Hullin to keep an eye open. These folk are all right, tho maybe a bit nutty. See you soon. Naroin.

The detective's departure came as no surprise. Maia had wondered why Naroin stuck around this long. Surely she had work to do?

Maia opened the box. Inside a tissue wrapping she found a case made of aromatic leather, attached to a soft strap. She opened it and found therein a gleaming instrument of brass and gleaming glass. The sextant was beautiful, perfect, and so well-made she found it impossible to tell how old it was, save by the fact that it possessed no readout window, no obvious way to access the Old Net. Still, it was on sight far more valuable than the one she had left behind, at Jellicoe. Maia unfolded the sighting arms and ran her hands over the apparatus. Still, she hoped Leie would manage to recover the old one. Cranky and half-broken as it was, she felt it was hers.

She pulled the blanket over her head and lay in a ball, wishing her sister were here. Wishing for Brod. Wishing her mind were not full of visions of smoke spirals and glittering sparks, spreading sooty ashes amid stratospheric clouds.

A week passed slowly. The physician dropped by every morning to examine Maia, gradually notching downward the anesthetic effects of the agone leech, and insisting that the patient take gentle walks around the temple grounds. In the afternoons, after lunch and a nap, Maia was carried by lugar-litter for a promenade through the suburban village and up to a city park overlooking the heart of Ursulaborg. Accompanying her went several tough-looking nuns, each flourishing an iron-shod "walking stick" with a dragon-headed grip. Maia wondered why the precautions. Surely nobody was interested in her, now that Renna was gone. Then she noticed her attendants glancing backward, keeping a wary eye on a foursome of identical, formidable-looking women trailing ten meters behind, dressed as civilians but walking with the calm precision of soldiers. It marred the sense of normality that otherwise flowed over her while passing through bustling market streets.

For the first time since she and Leie had explored Lanargh, Maia felt immersed back in ordinary Stratoin life. Trade and traffic and conversation flowed in all directions. Countless unfamiliar faces came in trios, quintets, or even mixed-age octets. No doubt it would have seemed terribly exotic, had two innocent twins from the far northeast come ashore here on their first voyage from home. Now, myriad subtle differences from Port Sanger only seemed trivial and irrelevant. What she noticed were similarities, witnessed with new eyes.