Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

It was evident, once the first piece fell into place. There was knowledge here. Not among the juniors. Not taught to the juniors. Withheld from them, rather. Given to others, later on.

With a grim persistence that would have astonished all factions among the warring Stifes and Dons, he persevered. Years went by. He achieved senior status, learned what he could, learned there was more yet that could be learned, in the Chancery!

He was thirty-eight, a cynical member of the trusted circle that actually ran the Tower of Bans, and a personal friend of the Superior, when he was responsible, all unwitting, for bringing Kesseret to the Tower:

One of his duties was the enforcement of the procreation laws. Women over the age of eighteen who were not readying for marriage or were not already mothers, whether married or no, came under his jurisdiction. A wealthy man—whose wealth did not exceed his age, decrepitude, or hideous ugliness— presented a petition together with a generous gift to the Tower. Tharius Don signed it as a matter of course. It ordered the nineteen-year-old woman named Kesseret to marry the merchant at once or present herself to the Tower as a novice. It was routine. Rarely did anyone come into the Tower as a result. Sometimes the one under orders made a generous gift and the petition was revoked for a time. Sometimes not. It was simply routine.

Except in this instance. Kessie had been unable to buy herself free. She had been unwilling to submit. She came to the Tower. To the Tower, to Tharius Don, who asked for and received mentorship in her case. She was older than most novices, as he had been. It was harder for her than for most, as it had been for him. She rejected much of what she was taught, as he had done. So he told her the truth. From the beginning. Comforting her, urging her, meeting her in quiet places away from the Tower, keeping her away from worker duty as much as possible. And one day she had said, “You can protect me all you like, Tharius Don. That doesn’t make it right, what we do.”

He had agreed. And from that the cause had been born. Not right away, not all at once. They did not know enough yet.

“I’m told the answers are at the Chancery,” he said. “I’ll have to get there.”

“How long?”

He shrugged. “Twenty years, minimum, I should think. I’m in line to be Superior when Filch dies or moves up. If they don’t give him the elixir pretty soon, there’ll be no question about his moving up. Say five years there, either way. Then I have to make some kind of reputation for myself. In something.”

“Something safe,” she whispered. “Apologetics, Tharius. The apologetics they feed us juniors is awful. It’s dull. It’s ugly. It wouldn’t convince a swig-bug. Make your reputation in defense of the faith, Tharius. In scholarship. It takes only cleverness and a way with words. It’s all mockery, all lies, but we can do it. I’ll help you.”

And she had helped him, and he her. They had been lovers for twenty years, sometimes impassioned, never less than fond. Kessie was forty when she took Tharius’s place as Superior of the Tower in Baris and he moved on to the Chancery. They had not known then that it was the last time they would make love to one another. Once at the Chancery, Tharius had advanced rapidly. He had been given the elixir. And after that was no passion, only the remembrance of their coupling, their ecstasy, though that remembrance had been full of nostalgic longing. The books he had sought were at the Chancery. The palace was full of books, very old books. No one cared except Tharius. He read his way through centuries of books. Of all those at the Chancery, only Tharius knew the truth of the Thraish-human wars in all their bloody, vicious details. He rebelled against that viciousness. Only Tharius knew of the Treeci and dreamed of that gentle race—for so he interpreted what he read—as an answer not only for the Thraish, but for man. From these books came the cause, and in that long, long remembrance the cause had grown.