Thalia shrugged. "Just a flu bug, Maia. Was a rash of sneezing in town, a week or two before, no big deal. When it reached the hold, one of the var workers got laid up a few days, but …"
"But then, a whole bunch of Lerners went and popped off. Just like that!" Baltha exclaimed, snapping her fingers with relish.
Maia felt dreadful — a hollowness in her belly and thickness in her throat — even as she fought to show no reaction at all. She knew her expression must seem stony, cold. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Renna briefly shiver.
I can't blame him. I'm terrible.
She recalled how, as a child, she used to be frightened by macabre stories the younger Lamai mothers loved telling summer brats on warm evenings, up on the parapets. Often, the moral of the gruesome tales seemed to be "Careful what you wish for. Sometime you might get it." Rationally, Maia knew her outburst of anger had not caused death to strike the metallurgist clan. Yet, it was dismaying, the vengeful streak she'd shown. Moments ago, if she could have done anything to cast misfortune on her enemies, she would have shown no pity. Was that morally the same as if she'd killed the Lerners herself?
It's not unheard-of for sickness to wipe out half a clan, she thought, trying to make sense of it all. There was a saying, "When one clone sneezes, her sisters go for handkerchiefs." It drew on a fact of life Leie and Maia had learned well as twins — that susceptibility to illness was often in the genes. In this case, it hadn't helped that Lerner Hold was far from what medical care existed in Long Valley. With all of them presumably laid up at the same time, who would care for the Lerners? Just var employees, who weren't brimming with affection for their contract-holders.
What a way to go . . . all at once, broken by the thing you're most proud of, your uniformity.
The group resumed riding silently, immersed in their own thoughts. A while later, when Maia turned to Renna in hope of distraction, the man from space just stared ahead as his mount slogged along, his eyebrows furrowed in what seemed a solid line of dark contemplation.
They slipped out of the maze of canyons after nightfall, climbing a narrow trail south and west of the dark, silent Lerner furnaces. Despite the lower temperatures out on the plain, emerging into the open came as a relief. Starlight spread across the prairie sky, and one of the smaller moons, good-luck Iris, shone cheerily, lifting their spirits. Thalia and Kiel jumped from their mounts on spotting a large patch of glory frost, protected by the northern shadow of a boulder. They rolled in the stuff, pushing it in each other's faces, laughing. When they remounted, Maia saw a light in their eyes, and wasn't sure she liked it. She approved even less when each of them started jockeying to ride near Renna, occasionally brushing his knee, engaging him in conversation and making interested sounds at whatever he said in reply.
Alone with her thoughts, Maia did not even look up to measure the constellations' progress. She had the impression it would be many days yet before they would catch sight of the coastal range and begin seeking a pass to the sea. Assuming, of course, they weren't spotted by Perkinites along the way.
And then? Even if we make it to Grange Head? Then what?
Freedom had its own penalties. In prison, Maia had known what to expect from one day to the next. Going back to being a poor young var, searching for a niche in an unwelcoming world, was more frightening than jail in some ways. Maia was only now coming to realize how she had been crippled by being a twin. Rather than the advantage she had imagined it to be, that accident of biology had let her live in fantasies, assuming there would always be someone to put her back against. Other summer girls left home knowing the truth, that no plan, no friendship, no talent, would ever by itself make your dreams come true. For the rest, you needed luck.
After having ridden most of the day and half the night, they made camp once more in the shelter of a gully. Kiel managed to start a fire with sticks gathered near the bone-dry watercourse. Except for cups of hot tea, they ate supper cold from the dwindling larder in their saddlebags.
As the others made ready for bed, Renna gathered several small items from his blue pouch. One was a slender brush of a kind Maia had never seen before. He also picked up a camp spade, a canteen, and takawq leaves before turning to leave. Baltha seemed uninterested, and Maia wondered, was it because there was no place he could escape to in this vast plain? Or had Baltha already gotten what she wanted from him? Maia had intended to pull Renna aside and tell him about the southerner's strange actions, the morning before, but it had slipped her mind. Now, her feelings toward him were ambivalent again, especially with Thalia and Kiel still acting decidedly wintry.
"Don't get lost out there!" Thalia called to Renna. "Want me to come along and hold your hand?"
"That may not be what needs holding," Kiel commented, and the other vars laughed. All except Maia. She was bothered by Renna's reaction to the kidding. He blushed, and was obviously embarrassed. He also seemed to enjoy the attention.
"Here," Kiel said, tossing her penlight. "Don't confuse it with anything else!"
Maia winced at the crude humor, but the others thought it terribly funny. Renna peered at the cylindrical wooden case with the switch and lens at one end. He shook his head. "I don't think I'll have any trouble telling the difference." The three older women laughed again.
Doesn't he realize he's encouraging them? Maia thought irritably. With no aurorae or other summer cues to launch male rut, none of this was likely to go anywhere, and right now the mood was light. But if he feigned interest just to tease the women, it could lead to trouble.
As Renna passed by her, carrying the camp shovel awkwardly in front of him, Maia blinked in surprise and fought not to stare. For the briefest instant, until he vanished from the light, she thought she'd caught sight of a distension, a bulge which, thank Lysos, none of the others appeared to have noticed!
The fire faded and the big moon, Durga, rose. Thalia snored beside Kiel, and Baltha stretched out next to the horses. Maia was drifting off with her eyes closed, envisioning the tall spires of Port Sanger above the glassy waters of the bay, when a thump yanked her awake again. She looked left, where a blocky object had fallen onto Renna's blanket. The man sat down next to it and began pulling off his shoes. "Found something interesting out there," he whispered.
She raised herself to one arm, touching the crumbled block. "What is it?"
"Oh, just a brick. I found a wall . . . and old basement. Not the first I've seen. We've been passing them all day."
Maia watched as he pulled off his shirt. Unshaven and unwashed for several days, he exuded maleness like nothing she had seen or smelled since those sailors aboard the Wotan, and that, after all, had been at sea. Were a man to show up at any civilized town in such condition, he would be arrested for causing a public nuisance. That would go doubly in summer, and fourfold in high winter! Being an alien, perhaps Renna didn't know the rules of modesty boys were taught at an early age, rules that held especially when glory had fallen. Attractiveness, at the wrong times, can be a kind of annoyance.
"I never saw any walls," she answered absently. "You mean people lived near here?"
"Mm. From the weathering, I'd say about five hundred years ago."
Maia gaped. "But I thought—"
"You thought this valley was settled for only a century or so, I know. And the planet just a few hundred years before that." Renna lay back against the saddle he was using for a pillow, and sighed. Apparently untroubled by the cold, he picked up the decomposing brick and turned it over. The muscles of his arms and chest knotted and shifted. Now that she was used to it, his male aroma did not seem as pungent as that of the Wotan sailors. Or was winter affecting her, as well?