Read Glory Season for Free Online

cracked. “You spew of wormy bottom muck! The weather’s fair. You’ve got cargo and paying passengers. What do you mean—”
    “Got a better offer.” The purser shrugged. “One o’ the big clans bought our cargo, just t’get us to stay. Seems they likes our boys. Wants ’em sticking round awhile, I reckon.”
    Maia felt a sinking realization in the pit of her stomach. “I guess some mothers want to start winter breeding early, this year,” she said, trying to make sense of this catastrophe. “It’s risky, but if they catch the men with heat still in them—”
    “Which house!” Leie interrupted, in no mood for rational appraisal. She kicked the barrel, causing the money sticks to rattle. The grizzled sailor, massing twice Leie’s fifty kilos, placidly scratched his beard.
    “Lesse now. Was it the Tildens? Or was it Lam—”
    “Lamatia?” Leie cried, this time flinging her arms so wildly the purser scrambled to his feet. “Now, lissie. No cause t’get excited …” Maia grabbed Leie’s arm as she seemed about to throw the sailor’s stool at him. “It makes sense!” Leie screamed. “That’s why they opened the guesthouse weeks early, and had us pouring wine for those lunks all night!”
    Maia sometimes envied her sister’s refuge in tantrums. Her own reaction, a numb retreat to logic, seemed less satisfying than Leie’s way of breaking everything in sight. “Leie,” she urged hoarsely. “It can’t be Lamatia. They only deal with high-class guilds, not the sort of trash we can afford passage with.” It was satisfying to catch the purserwincing at her remark. “Anyway, we’re better off dealing with honest men. There are other ships.”
    Her sister whirled. “Yeah? Remember how we studied? Buying books and even net time, researching every port this tub was going to? We had a plan for every stop … people to see. Questions. Prospects. Now it’s all wasted!”
    How could it be wasted?
Maia wondered woodenly.
All those hours studying, memorizing the Oscco Isles and Western Sea
.…
    Maia realized neither of them was reacting well to sudden despair.
    “Let’s go,” she told her sister, scooping up the money and trying for both their sakes to keep worry out of her voice. “We’ll find another ship, Leie. A better one, you’ll see.”
    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