Shay Tal and Loilanun ate lumps of bread together, and took their ration of rathel, or pig’s counsel, before moving over to one of the pestles. The older woman, now her face could be seen more clearly, looked ghastly, with hollows under her eyes and her hair matted.
“Did the gossie tell you anything useful? Anything to help? Did she say anything about Laintal Ay?”
“She said we must collect knowledge. Respect knowledge. She scorned me.” Talking through her face full of bread, she added, “She said knowledge was more important than food. Well, she said it was food. Probably she was confused—not being used to it down there. It’s hard to understand all they say… .”
As the supervisor appeared, they moved over to the grain.
Shay Tal looked sideways at her friend, the hollows of whose face were now filled with an ashen light from the eastern window. “Knowledge can’t be food. However much we knew, we’d still have to grind the corn for the village.”
“When Mother was alive, she showed me a drawing of a machine powered by the wind. It ground the grain and women didn’t lift a finger, she said. The wind did the women’s work.”
“The men wouldn’t care for that,” Shay Tal said, with a laugh.
Despite her caution, Shay Tal’s resolution hardened; she became the most extreme of the women in defying what was unthinkingly accepted.
Her special work was in the boilery. Here, the flour was kneaded with animal fat and salt, and steamed over troughs of rapid-flowing water from the hot underground springs. When the dark brown loaves were ready, they were cooled, and a lean girl named Vry distributed them to everyone in Oldorando. Shay Tal was the expert of this process; her loaves had the reputation of tasting better than those of any other cook.
Now she saw mysterious perspectives beyond the loaves of bread. Routine no longer contented her, and her manner became more remote. When Loilanun fell ill of a wasting disease, Shay Tal took her and Laintal Ay into her house, despite her father’s protests, and patiently tended the older woman. They talked together for hours. Sometimes Laintal Ay listened; more often, he grew bored and went off on his own.
Shay Tal began to pass ideas to the other women in the boilery. She talked in particular to Vry, who was at a malleable age. She talked about the human preference for truth over lies as resembling the need for light above dark. The women listened, muttering uneasily.
And not only the women. In her dark furs, Shay Tal had a majesty felt by the men, too—Laintal Ay, among others. With her proud bearing went proud talk. Both the looks and the talk attracted Aoz Roon. He would listen and argue. He released a vein of flirtatiousness in Shay Tal, who responded to his air of authority. She approved of his support of Dathka against Nahkri; but she allowed him no liberties. Her own liberty depended on allowing him none.
The weeks passed, and great storms roared over the towers of Embruddock. Loilanun’s voice grew weaker, and one afternoon she passed away. In her illness, she had transmitted some of Loil Brys knowledge to Shay Tal and to other women who came to see her. She made the past real to them, and all that she said was filtered through Shay Tal’s dark imagination.
Loilanun, as she faded, helped Shay Tal to found what they called the academy. The academy was intended for women; there they would seek together to be something other than drudges. Many of the drudges stood wailing by her deathbed until Shay Tal, in a fit of impatience, threw them out.
“We can observe the stars,” Vry said, raising her waiflike face. “Have you ever studied how they move on regular paths? I would like to understand the stars better.”
“Everything valuable is buried in the past,” Shay Tal said, looking down at the countenance of her dead friend. “This place cheated Loilanun, and cheats us. The gossies wait for us. Our lives are so circumscribed! We need to make better people just as we need to bake better loaves.”