A dancing couple reeled within a half-step of us, and a strange woman said irritably, “Must you block the dancing floor? If you are not dancing, at least get out of the way of those who are!”
I took Dio’s elbow, not too gently, and steered her out on the sidelines. “I am sorry—I did not know you wanted flowers from me. I did not know you were in Thendara.” Suddenly all my bitterness overflowed. “I do not yet know the courtesies of dealing with a wife who abandoned me!”
“I abandoned—” she broke off and stared at me. She said, evidently trying to steady her voice. “I abandoned you? I thought you divorced me because I could not give you a healthy son—”
“Who told you that?” I demanded, grasping her shoulders until she winced; I loosened my grip, but went on urgently, “I went back to the hospital! They told me you had left, with your brothers—”
Gradually the color left her face, till the freckles stood out dark against her white skin. She said, “Lerrys bundled me onto the ship before I could walk…He had to carry me. He told me that as the Head of a Domain, you could not marry a woman who could not give you an Heir—”
“Zandru send him scorpion whips!” I swore. “He came to me, just after I came here—he threatened to kill me—said you had been through enough—Dio, I swear I thought it was what you wanted—”
Her eyes were beginning to overflow and I saw her bite her lip; Dio could never bear to cry where anyone could see her. She put out a hand to me, then drew it back and said, “I come here to Festival—hoping to see you—and I find you in Callina’s arms!” She turned her back on me, and started to move away; I held her back with a hand on her shoulder.
“Lerrys has made enough mischief,” I said. “We’ll have this out with him, and we’ll do it now! Is he here, that damned mischief-maker?”
“How dare you speak that way of my brother?” Dio demanded inconsistently. “He was doing what he thought was best for me! At that point I was hysterical, I never wanted to see you again—”
“And I was complying with your wishes,” I said, drawing a deep breath. “Dio, what’s the use of all this? It’s done. I did what I thought you wanted—”
“And I come here to find you and see if it was what you wanted,” Dio flung at me, “and I find you already consoling yourself with that damned frozen stick of a Keeper! I hope she strikes you with lightning when you touch her—you deserve it!”
“Don’t talk that way about Callina—” I said sharply.
“She is sworn Keeper; what does she want with my husband?”
“You made it very clear that I was not your husband—”
“Then why was it I who was served with notice of a divorce? What a fool I will look—” Again she looked as if she were going to cry. I put my arm around her, trying to comfort her, but she pulled herself angrily away. “If that’s what you want, you are welcome to it! You and Callina—”
I said, “Don’t be a fool, Dio! Callina will be handfasted to Beltran within the hour! I couldn’t stop her—”
“I’ve no doubt you tried,” Dio retorted. “I saw you!”
I sighed. Dio was determined to make a scene. I still thought we should settle this in private, but I was on guard, too. She had made me feel like a fool, not the other way around; and she had had every right to leave me after the suffering I had put her through; but I did not want to be reminded again of the tragedy, I was still too raw about it. “Dio, this is neither the time nor the place—”
“Can you think of a better?” She was furious; I didn’t blame her. If Lerrys had been there, I think I would have killed him. So she had not left me, after all, of her own free will. Yet, as I looked at her angry face, I realized that there was no way to go back where we had left off.
Others were looking at us curiously. I was not surprised; I, at least, must have been broadcasting my emotions—which were largely confusion—all through the ballroom. I said, “We had better dance,” and touched her arm. It was not a couple-dance and I was grateful; I did not want quite that much intimacy, not now, not here, not with all that lay between us. I moved into the outer ring of men, and Dio let Linnell move to her side and draw her into the circle. Strange, I thought, that Linnell, my closest kinswoman, did not know of our brief marriage nor the disastrous way in which it had ended. It was not, after all, the sort of story to tell a young woman on the verge of her own marriage. I saw how she looked at Derik as she pulled him into the set. Then the music began and I gave myself up to it, as the figure of the dance swept Dio toward me, with a formal bow, and away again. At last, as the dance ended, we faced one another again and bowed. I saw Derik slide his arm through Linnell’s, and was left with Dio again.
I said formally, “May I bring you some refreshment?”
Her eyes glinted tears. “Must you be so formal? Is this nothing but a game to you?”
I shook my head, tucked my hand under her arm and led her toward the buffet. Her head hardly came up to my shoulder. I had forgotten what a little thing she was; I always remembered her as being taller. Perhaps it was the way she carried herself, proud and independent, perhaps it was only that on Vainwal, like many women, she had worn high-heeled shoes, and here she had reverted to the low soft sandals that women wore in the Domains. The pale green of her gown made her hair shine reddish gold.
Our separation need not be final. Dio as Lady Alton, and we could live at Armida… and for a moment I was overcome with a flood of homesickness for the hills of my home, the long shadows at twilight, the way the sun lowered over the line of tall trees behind the Great House… I could have this still, I could have it with Dio—
The long refreshment tables were laden with every kind of delicacy one could imagine. I dipped her up a cup of some sweet red fruit drink; tasting it, discovered it had been heavily laced with some strong and colorless spirit, for a single glass made me dizzy. Dio, watching as I drank, set hers down untasted and said, “I don’t want to get drunk here tonight. There’s something—I don’t know what it is. I’m frightened.”
I took that seriously. Dio’s instincts were good; and she was one of the hypersensitive Ridenows. Nevertheless, I said, “What’s wrong? Is it only that there are Terrans and off-worlders here tonight?” Lawton was there, with several functionaries from the Terran HQ, and it suddenly occurred to me to wonder if Kathie would see the Terran uniforms, appeal to them for protection, accuse us of kidnapping or worse. Most Terrans knew nothing of matrix technology, and some of them were ready to believe anything about it. And I was quite sure that what Callina and I had done was now against some law or other.
Dio was lightly in rapport with me, and she turned to say with asperity, “Can’t you get Callina out of your mind for a minute, even when you are talking with me?”
I could hardly believe this; Dio was jealous? “Do you care, preciosa?”
“I shouldn’t, but I do,” she said, raising her face to me, suddenly serious. “I think I wouldn’t mind… if she wanted you… but I don’t want to see you hurt. I don’t think you know everything about Callina.”
“And of course, you do?”
She said, “It was I who should have gone to the Comyn Tower, to be trained as—as Ashara’s surrogate. I did not want to be nothing more than—than a pawn for Ashara. I had known one of the—one of her other under-Keepers. And so I made certain that I was—” she hesitated, colored a little—“disqualified.”
I understood that. There is now no reason why a Keeper must be a sworn virgin, set apart, consecrated, near-worshipped. For good reasons, they remain celibate while they are functioning as Keeper in a circle; but not in the old, superstitious, ritualistic way. There had been a time when a woman chosen as Keeper entered upon a lifelong sentence of alienation, chastity, separation; not now. Yet, for some reason or another, Ashara chose her under-Keepers from those who were trained as virgins; and Dio’s way was as good as any to avoid that sentence.