Glory Season

"Bleeders and rutters!" Maia muttered as she lifted her arms and twisted to grab the loose ends with her teeth. After some tugging, the knot gave way, and soon she was picking the laces free one by one. Relapses of dizziness kept interrupting, forcing her to pause and breathe deeply. By the time she finished, Maia had reevaluated her first impression — the bindings weren't so dumb after all. No doubt the jailers had meant for her to free herself eventually, but this wasn't something she could have managed earlier, with guards nearby.

At last she flung the cloths aside with a curse. Her hands tingled painfully as full circulation returned. Rubbing them, Maia stretched, waving her arms and walking to get the kinks out.

Near the door, she found a small table she hadn't noticed before, on which stood a pitcher of water and a dented cup. Forcing her trembling hands to master the movements, she poured and drank ravenously. When the pitcher was half-empty, she put the cup down and wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist.

I don't suppose there's anything to eat?

There was no food, but underneath the table she found a large ceramic pot with a lid. Glazed depictions of sailing ships battled high seas along its side. She removed the cover and squatted on the cold porcelain to relieve yet another of her body's cataloged complaints.

As immediate concerns were satisfied, more afflictions came to the fore, awaiting attention. Despair, her old nemesis, seemed to rise up and politely ask, "Now?"

Maia shook her head firmly. I've got to keep busy. Not think for a while.

She set to work struggling to push heavy boxes together and then levering one on top of another. Strenuous labor set off renewed waves of dizziness, which she waited out before recommencing. Finally, a makeshift pyramid lay beneath the high window. Clambering onto the ultimate pile of folded carpets, she was at last able to bring her eyes level with the narrow slit, to peer out upon a vast expanse of prairie that began right below her at the foot of a steep, vertical drop. The hole looked pretty narrow to worm through, but even if she managed, it would take a warehouse full of rugs and curtains, tied together, to make a rope long enough to reach the valley floor. This room might not have been designed as a prison, but it would do.

To think I used to dream of seeing the inside of a man sanctuary, Maia thought sardonically, and climbed down.

She tried prying at a couple of crates, but nothing persuaded them to open. Maia did manage to get some of the rugs unrolled to make a bed of sorts — more like a nest — over in one corner. Her stomach growled. She drank and used the chamber pot again. Beyond that, there seemed nothing left to do. . .

"Now," the voice of despair said with assertion, unwilling to brook further delay, and Maia buried her face in her hands.

Why me? she wondered. Loneliness, her arch enemy, never seemed content. Its return visits were each more brutal than the last, ever since that awful storm tore the ships Wotan and Zeus apart from one another, and she from her twin. Maia had thought that tragedy her nadir. What more could the world possibly do to her?

Apparently, a whole lot more.

Maia lay down with a length of soft blue curtain material wrapped around her shoulders, and waited for her keepers to come with food … or word of her fate. Thalia and Kiel will worry about me, she thought, trying to raise an image of friendship for whatever tenuous comfort it offered. She had sunk too low to fantasize that anyone might actually search for her. The solace she sought was simply to imagine somebody on Stratos cared enough to notice she was gone.

The dour-faced guardians returned soon after Maia fell into an exhausted, fitful slumber. Their noise roused her, and she rubbed her eyes as one of them dropped a clattering tray onto the rickety table. Maia could not tell if it was the same pair that had freighted her from Lerner Hold, or if those two had rotated duties with others exactly like them. Stepping back to the door, the sisters watched her with eyes as round and brown and innocent as a doe's.

They had brought food, but little news. When she asked between ravenous spoonings of nondescript stew what was to become of her, their monosyllable answers conveyed that they neither knew nor cared. About the only information Maia was able to pry loose was their family name — Guel — after which they fell into taciturn silence.

What talent or ability had enabled the original ancestress of such broody, beetle-browed women to establish a parthenogenetic clan? What niche did they fill? Surely none requiring affability or great intelligence. Yet, for all Maia knew, the trio she had seen were part of a specialized hive with thousands of individual members, all descended from an original Guel mother who had proved herself excellent at …